Tomorrow I’m off to the New England SCBWI conference! YAY! It’s my first conference in over a year, so I’m very much looking forward to it…but it is also my first weekend away from The Boy, so it’ll be hard to leave. We’ll both be fine, though. (That’s what I keep telling myself anyway!)

I’ve been going to SCBWI conferences for quite a few years now and have gathered a plethora of great tips. I’ll certainly be sharing my favorite nuggets about this conference, but in the meantime, here are some highlights from past conferences I’ve attended.

  • Take the time and make the space for your writing dreams. ~Laurie Halse Anderson
  • A vital aspect to nurturing talent is to accept and validate your need to create. Honor, cherish, and celebrate it. ~Laurie Halse Anderson
  • There are no secure boxes. Do whatever you want to do, and do it wildly, purely, uncensored, even regrettable. Do it as hard as you can. ~Donna Jo Napoli
  • Never give up because you might be on the one yard line, and you just don’t know it. ~Donna Gephart
  • Books take us away from home, so we can actually see our home. ~M.T. Anderson
  • Human beings need stories; we always have and we always will. ~Gennifer Choldenko
  • As artists, we need to fill ourselves up to flowing and give it all back. ~E.B. Lewis
  • In a roller-coaster ride you know exactly where you’re going, end up where you began, and you can a buy a ticket to go on again and have almost the same exact experience; it’s thrilling, but it’s not a journey. A journey takes you where you’ve never been before; it’s pretty scary and the dangers are real. ~Sandy Asher
  • All stories are based in truth somewhere. Pay attention to those stories and write them down. ~Judy Schachner
  • Use your very guts to spill out your very best. ~Susan Patron

Enjoy your weekend, everyone. With the likes of Nova Ren Suma, Kate Messner, Sharon Creech, and many other authors, agents, and editors presenting at the conference, I know I will have an awesome weekend.