NJ SCBWI 2023
This last weekend, I went to the New Jersey SCBWI Conference. Pre-covid, I had heard this was a fabulous conference. And it was. It was an intimate group of kid lit creators. I sat next to multiple agents and got to know them as people. I got valuable feedback on my current creation.
The format of the conference allowed me to mingle with professionals in the field. It felt very empowering. I plan on attending the NJ SCBWI conference in the future. It’s worth the money!
This morning, I’m sitting at my computer going over everything I learned and I’ll most likely share much of it here. Just like taking notes, writing about what I learned helps me to absorb it better.
The main reason I chose to attend the NJ SCBWI conference was to get feedback on Paige and Webb. Specifically, I needed agent and editor feedback. I thought I had a great manuscript and I even dreamed the night before about having the agent being really excited about the possibilities. I signed up for the conference on the last day and after reviewing all the remaining options for agents or editors that could look at my work, I had a woman and a man. I chose the man with hopes that he would have a small understanding of computers. Yes. I know.
After the opening keynote at the conference, we had Round Tables. I sat with an agent and 5 other writers and we shared our work. I only got through the third chapter before it was time for me to receive feedback.
The round table group had some fabulous advice. Someone said that the vast majority of kids today have absolutely no idea of what life was like before computers. I should consider a chapter about “The Dark Ages” when computers were the size of rooms. It would put the history into context and explain the explosion of communications that happened from the 1960’s until the 1990’s and on. Someone suggested that this was a nonfiction Middle grade book about how the web came to be. Others suggested this was better suited for the education market. What if I compared how we communicated before the World Wide Web and how we communicate today. Carmen loved the illustrations. Another person suggested it would make a great non-fiction graphic novel. (Fortunately, I was already heading that way.) Ginna and Ann suggested Killer Underware Invasion by Elise Gravel as a comp title. Several people thought the topic was marketable.
I chose to attend a Graphic Novel workshop and an editing workshop and a workshop on chapter books. All were fabulous and I came away with great information and I’ll probably write separate blog posts about each of them. During the last workshop, my one on one with an agent was scheduled. This was the big thing.
He started off by asking me what I envisioned for this work. He said he was flummoxed by it. I learned that the agent I had chosen was not very computer literate and had little desire to learn it himself. Hmmmm….I did not expect that. He too thought it was better suited as a text book in the education market. As I tried to explain why I was passionate about this project, he asked a really good question: How does knowing the history of how the web was created help a kid understand how to write html? And I wrote a couple of more questions down from our conversation: Do we need to know the background in order to understand how to write html? How does knowing this history help you write html?
That first question got me. The only way knowing the history of how the web was created helps someone know how to code is because html is based on SGML. But no one has to know that history to understand the syntax of tags used in markup languages. I needed to know it. And now I know how it is related.
The group I got feedback from at the New England SCBWI conference in April urged me to overwrite the subject. It looks like I definitely did that. And I think it is time to come back to the MIT. What’s the Most Important Thing for Paige and Webb?
I started this project almost a decade ago because I wanted kids to understand that coding is not scary. It’s pretty simple. And I wanted to do it as a picture book or a concept book for young kids. Just like we see concept books for reading for young kids, I wanted to do concept books for coding for young kids. So I tried to pair a story with the concept of opening and closing tags. My book <Ski Adventure> and now <Pancakes> came out of that idea.
I wonder what would happen if I took out all the history and just spent a chapter or two about the syntax of tags before I told the story about pancakes and being mad. The other stories I have planned for this series are also fun to play with the syntax that Tim Berners-Lee created. But they too play with the concepts.
We talked about how I probably have two different books. A History of HTML and a book about How HTML Syntax Works. He said if I pulled out the history part and made it into a trade book, instead of a text book, he would be willing to look at it again. I’m not sure he is the right agent for this book though. But if I succeed in having him understand it, then I know anyone will get it.
I left the meeting with a thought that I had several days ago as I was praying about this book. It isn’t a book, it’s a web page.