Monday, March 15, 2010

First pages reminder

If you signed up for one or more of the First Pages sessions at the 19th Annual Writing & Illustrating for Children Conference but haven't sent in your first page(s) yet, please do it soon.

As a reminder, we must RECEIVE your page in our P.O. Box by MARCH 20th, and we don't want you to miss out!

Check your conference registration e-mail for full instructions.

If you haven't attended one of our first-pages sessions before, here's how they work:

Two of our faculty sit at the head of the room with a stack of first pages. One of them reads (or a designated reader does the honors). The faculty then give brief feedback on the work.

The authors of first pages are anonymous. Attendees sit and listen and take notes, but don't explain or defend anything. They also don't leap out of their chairs and yell, "That masterwork is mine, people, mine!"

The purpose of these sessions isn't to make a sale or impress faculty (though on rare occasions, they are impressed). Rather, it's to give you a chance to hear how many first pages at once strike our talented faculty, so you can learn how to make your own first pages shine.

Your first page might get read. It might not. The point is to learn how good first pages sound, and what you can do to improve your craft in general.

Here's an example of what one writer (in a different region) learned from a first-pages session.

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