First Birthday

May 19th will be the first birthday of my blog, and I've come to some realizations over the past twelve months. Having a blog is like having a child, or even just a goldfish. They all take care and tending. If my blog was a child, I’d long ago have been turned in to the folks at Child Protective Services for neglect. If it was a goldfish, it would have been found floating belly-up in its bowl last October and been flushed down the toilet.

Oh, I have the best of excuses and lots of them. The main one is that I’ve been writing other stuff. But I’ve also been away at conferences, wrapped up in family matters, dealing with a few health issues, housing overnight guests in my writing room, trying to run a business, pruning my roses and feeding my two cats. But those are many of the same issues a bazillion other responsible blog parents are also dealing with! I am regularly awed by how dedicated they are about sharing their wisdom and their beautiful words. I don’t know how they do it, but I wish I could be more like them.

I even made responsible blog parenting one of my New Year’s resolutions, and look at me. Tomorrow is the first of May! But it's never too late to turn over a new leaf (or page, as it were), so in an attempt to redeem myself, over the next several weeks I’m going to blog about some of the writing highlights of the past seven months.

In October I had the awesome experience of attending the Rutgers One-on-One Conference in New Jersey. I rendezvoused with three colleagues from Spalding University (where we all received our MFAs in Writing for Children) and traveled with them from the Newark airport to Piscataway the afternoon before the conference. (A word of advice if you go—consider renting a car with a GPS!)

On Saturday we were part of a group of eighty aspiring writers who were matched up with eighty agents, editors and illustrators for some up-close-and-personal mentoring. After lunch we gathered with four other mentor/mentee pairs for a five-on-five session in which we had the opportunity to ask questions about publishing trends, submission processes and what they each were looking for.

At the end of the day we all went home with contact information on all eighty professionals and permission to submit to them. I can’t recommend the conference enough to anyone who has a finished manuscript they are prepared to pitch. I also recommend that you be assertive (but nice), as some participants tended to monopolize the mentors unfairly.

The cost of the conference is $195 and the date is October 16, 2010. Applications are due by June 15th , and you are notified of your acceptance by the end of the summer. Don’t miss this terrific opportunity!