Wow, the WCBA really knows how to put on a conference. I returned from Wellington last night after the weekend Spinning Gold Conference having had my brain poked, prodded, broadened, enlightened and occasionally pickled. Maureen and Fifi, and your amazing helpers, I hope you all realise how brilliant you are. Organisers with more resources (but way less talent) have not been able to achieve what you did. And folks, Children's writers and illustrators truly are the nicest bunch of people you could hope to meet. My only regret is that I did not meet and talk with every one there. We discussed creativity, promotion, marketing, publishing, bookselling, taxes, poetry, being monsters and more, and I plan to blog some more about the things I learned later this week. If you want to know more about what it was like and whether it is something you would like to attend in future I believe there will be some material going up on the Spinning Gold Blog when the organisers have sufficiently recovered (and they are truly deserving of a long break).
In the meantime ponder this:-
From the Herald On Sunday, September 20th - "the book chains are setting aside almost their entire Christmas contingency budgets to buy in more copies (of Dan Brown's The Lost Symbol), should it - as they expect - go lunar."
5 comments:
Glad you enjoyed it so much! I agree completely about the loveliness of the people. Melinda you were one of the people I regretted not meeting on the weekend, because I read your blog so often!!!
Its great to know you check out the blog. I'm sorry I didn't get to meet you at Spinning Gold but I felt like Maureen was an old friend when I finally met her over the weekend because of all our chats via our blogs :) I hope the next conference won't be too far away so I get the chance to get to know everyone I missed this time around.
I echo both your comments.
Melinda...I wished I could have sat down with you and talked over a meal or at the cocktail party or...but it was crazy manic... just to see you in doorways and corridors and when I passed you chocolate...had to be enough.
next time....
Maureen still crazy manic looking for her fleeing brain cell...(2am)
Well Maureen - I'm just going to have to wangle another trip down to Wellington sometime in the not too distant with cocktails and dinner and lots of writery talk but no deadlines, or organisational stress allowed. And what are you doing up at 2am - you crazy thing!
I'm just braving the web now... it was awesome wasn't it? I missed Kate De Goldi's keynote trying to sort out technical issues with the internet, but did find chocolate in my conference bag today when I went to tidy up the unholy mess in my studio... a small consolation- but necessary!
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