Don’t you just love Tom Waits? I know I do, and so does Booktunes.
Booktunes is about to publish the next batch of great books with music, starting with Harstad’s Buzz Aldrin, What Happened to You in All the Confusion? and — Yay! One of my favorite writers — Andrew Smith’ In the Path of Falling Objects. Two epic novels with epic playlists!
Stay tuned!
Venue? Check!
Speakers? Check!
Program? Check!
Flyers? Check
Website? Check
In short: The first SCBWI NL conference is now OPEN FOR REGISTRATION
Are you interested in writing and illustrating for children and do you need guidance? Are you already writing and illustrating for children, but do you wish to hone your craft with the best teachers out there? Are you interested in how publishing in the Netherlands and in the global market works? Would you like to know about literary agents, about app building, about book making, and above all about writing and illustrating for kids and teens?
Now is your chance!
On Saturday November 5, 2011 the conference The Netherlands and the Big World Out There: Publishing in the Global Market will be held. A day filled with keynotes, lectures, masterclasses and demonstrations, all in the bustling center of Amsterdam, amidst an abundance of bookstores and publishing houses.
We have been able to bring in some amazing speakers to guide you: Agent Erzsi Deàk of Hen & Ink Literary; Illustrator/Writer Doug Cushman; Publisher Martine Schaap of Ploegsma Children’s Books; Art Director Ben Norland of Walker Books, App Developer Omar Curiëre of OCG Studios and Illustrator Coordinator Siobhan Wall.
For more information and to register visit: nlscbwi.wordpress.com
Of course there was also fun stuff in LA, not just scary stuff.
Jon Sciezska's autobiography
Jon Scieszka was there to whip up spirits and he did that with his usual fervor. Scieszka writes because he loves to make kids laugh, he says. His inspiration comes from all the weird stuff that happened when he was growing up with his five brothers. You can read all about his adventures growing up a Scieszka in his autobiography Knucklehead: Tall Tales and Almost True Stories of Growing Up Scieszka.
He’s also very serious about his job as a children’s book writer. He advocates reading and literacy as fervently as he loves making the world laugh. In 2008 he was appointed the National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature and he has set up . His account of how he got an entire elementary school to salaam him — he told them that was the proper way to greet an ambassador — while gathered in a Catholic church was hilarious and one of the highlights of the conference. It left us salaaming him and helpless with laughter.
But for me the absolute highlight of the conference was when I had to assist a writer at the autograph party. My debt to my friend Priscilla Burris is eternal. She switched places with me and assigned me to the table of… Henri Winkler. That’s right: Arthur Fonzarelli a.k.a. THE FONZ! I’m not kidding you. He was there! With Lin Oliver he writes screamingly funny books about Hank Zipzer, the world’s greatest underachiever. When I told him I was there to assist him, he grabbed my badge, took one look at it, said “you’re from Amsterdam?”, got up, hugged me and… kissed me.
I mean, people, I was kissed by The Fonz. Talking about Happy Days!
Proof? Not The Kiss, but here I am with Henri Winkler, the sweetest and friendliest guy ever. Priscilla Burris you made my day. I salaam you!
I look decidedly goofy and like I'm off to heaven in a second. Guess what? I was!
The 40th Summer Conference of the SCBWI is over. I’m at the airport lounge looking out over the airport, seeing friends leave the hazy city that shimmers in the background. It makes me sad that I have to leave, knowing that it will take quite a while before I will see most of my friends and my mentors again. While writers work in solitude and –usually– love the quietness, just like I do, there is nothing more energizing than being around kindred spirits. We’ve shared a lot these past week: break-throughs, new publications, leaps-forward, staggering discoveries, stirring workshops, riveting keynotes and above all continuing friendships and the making of new ones.
Being at the conference as the Regional Advisor of the Netherlands chapter was an exciting experience. It brought me to the very heart of what SCBWI is about: the exchange of knowledge between writers, illustrators, editors, publishers, agents, librarians, educators, booksellers and others involved with literature for young people.
I loved every minute of it.
SCBWI 40th Summer Conference
It is too early to give a full account of the conference and its meetings, parties and four days crammed with keynotes and workshops. It has to sink in a bit more. What I do know and what will stay with me forever is the workshop by author Bruce Coville. He told us to do just that what scares me most: leave my comfort zone. What he literally said was: “If you see a cliff, jump off it. It’s the only way to grow wings.”
I so suck at jumping off cliffs. I need to know where I go, where I will end up. I need to plan and plot my way forward in life and in my writing life, but Bruce’s words hit a chord that made me sing inside –thankfully inside only, because I really, really can’t sing without shattering all the windows in a four-mile radius. I know that I will have to jump of cliffs to get most out of my writing life and from now on I will. I might hesitate at first, but in the end I am convinced that I will jump.
You might wonder why I would take that risk. I tell you: I can take that risk because I know about the solid and warm net that’s down every cliff. That net is SCBWI, a net knotted of the most wonderful writers and illustrators in the world.
Thank you Lin Oliver and Steve Mooser for jumping off that cliff 40 years ago!
Tagged: Books, Bruce Coville, Lin Oliver, Mina Witteman, SCBWI, Steve Mooser
A 17-year-old reading Herman Koch’s Odessa Star
There is a lot of buzz going on about boys not reading. Authors, publishers, librarians, booksellers, they all rack their brains to find ways to get them to read. Particularly young adult boys seem to have fallen in a deep and dark literature-less pit.
I’m an inveterate optimist if it comes to reading, even when it concerns boys. They do read.
But there are some preconditions.
First of all the book needs to be good. It needs to be a stories about stuff they’re interested in. Young adult boys have a vast range of topics that appeal to them: girls, scooters or cars, experimenting, hanging about… Not necessarily in that order.
Just kidding.
There are way more issues that grab them. The young adult struggle for independence and the inevitable testing boundaries offer an author a myriad of possibilities to write about, in reality, dystopian, science fiction or thriller setting.
There are plenty books out there that work for young adult boys. I only have to name Andrew Smith‘ The Marbury Lens or John Green’s Looking For Alaska. And there are plenty more out there. For more titles, check out Books for Boys or the famous goodreads list.
But what does it need to have a young adult boy actually pick up a book? I think progress is helping us out here. Where most young adults boys don’t mind schlepping around an extra battery for their tinkered-up scooter, they do seem to mind the weight of a book or the mere fact that they might be considered an egghead if they run around with one. And that’s where the e-book comes in handy.
In short: don’t offer them paper books, but offer them electronic versions of well-written, well-crafted books, books that interest them. Books they can download on their computer or, better still, their cell, and read them anywhere, anytime. Books that won’t bust their cool.
What about you? Do you think boys don’t read?
Recently Google announced and launched its social network platform: Google+. It’s a cross-over between Facebook and Twitter and lots of people put in a word or two about it. Some like it, some don’t, some love it, some hate it. But whatever you feel, it’s there and you can’t evade it.
For me the important question was: do I genuinely need another social network to add to my visibility?
That seems an easy question. Right?
You could argue that, in order to get as much buzz around The Writer Known As Mina Witteman as possible, I should jump at Google+. Eventually, Google+ will lure in public from Facebook, just like the Zuckerberg trap lured in public from MySpace and Hyves. It will, no doubt, lure in others, readers who have so far successfully resisted the temptations of online presence. Users of social network platforms are potential readers and — I won’t beat around the bush — could be the future buyers of my books.
The downside is that engaging in another social network venture will take up precious writing time. It’s another lure away from my Work In Progress, The Weed Man, which is coming along fine. Do I really need to divide my time between my blog, Twitter, Facebook and Google+? I circled around this for times, staring at the Google+ invite, clicking it away, trashing it, but rescuing it right back from the bin.
And in the end I accepted the invite. Since the public relations and marketing challenge is no longer a task of the publisher, but a joint effort of author, agent and publisher, I need to pitch in. So here I am… On Google+
Find me. 🙂
Tagged: Facebook, Google+, Mina Witteman, platform presence, Twitter, Zuckerberg
Mina Witteman 