LA Themes?

I just got back from the SCBWI LA conference - I had such a blast!!! Hanging out with friends, dancing and partying at the beach bash, having a great portfolio review with Marla, watching Crossing Jordan being filmed by the pool, and learning as much as I could soak up.

I'm going to post more about the conference after I get all of my notes typed in, but right now I'm thinking the main theme for me was character. The take-away theme for everyone is different, depending on what sessions you go to (and maybe nobody else thinks about overall themes). This year I took a lot of novel sessions where they talked about character in everything from chick lit (OMG!) to edgy YA. I think a lot of the character stuff can be applied to my picture book writing too, even though it was intended for novels. All good books need good, strong characters.

I learned other stuff too, but there always seems to be a theme that runs through the many sessions that I take.

Last year my take-away was emotion and how to get that into the story. Either everyone was talking about it, or it just jumped out at me whenever anyone mentioned emotion (which they did, a lot).

p.s. It's nice to be home, but I miss hanging out with all my friends!

p.p.s. I really do know how to draw a pig...in fact, I did some doodling in one of my sessions. Ok, I did lots of doodling in many sessions, and I've made a collage of the best ones for my sketch this week: sruble's home page

p.p.p.s. cool thing!! got back to an email from someone who had seen my cards on zazzle (sruble Card Store) and wanted an image on a T-shirt. I was able to send them to my cafepress store (sruble Shop) and they bought a bunch of stuff with other images too - yay!