i am the biggest dork in the land

Up until this past weekend the longest amount of time I spent away from Miss K was to go to a football game up in Seattle. However, this weekend I was gone twelve hours on both Saturday and Sunday and I have to say...It was awesome. Although I missed my munchkin terribly I had an amazing time at The Society of Childrens Book Writers and Illustrators Annual Conference. The weekend was filled with good food, great feedback, and amazing speakers. The conference also afforded me the opportunity to geek-out when meeting Holly Black (for those not hip to YA or children's lit, she wrote The Spiderwick Chronicles). Here's me looking like a tool...

I don't know why I always squint like that!! Anyway, she gave a wonderful keynote address along with Dan Santat and E. Lockhart.

I also had the opportunity to get some great feedback regarding Swept, come away with a lot of new ideas for other projects and most importantly I was able to meet, in person, several of the agents I plan to submit to early this summer.

Whew!! I was exhausted by the time it was all over but so incredibly excited.

i'm off to start revisions:)

confidence

I can currently hear Mr. Awesome and Miss K upstairs...they're singing, well the Mr. is singing and I'm sure Miss K is gumming it up. She's loving having her daddy home on a Monday, she's been cheesing at him all day. In just a little while they'll be heading off to the mall to do some running around and I'll be left alone with my thoughts!! I'll be sitting right here due to the fact that I have a battle to tend to. You see for almost two years now I have been working on a young adult novel called Swept. A year and a half ago I went to a writers conference and had interest from several agents and some great feedback and it lit a fire under me for all of a month before I was plagued with fear and insecurity:

"everyone and their mom wants to write a book"

"what makes your book any different"

"you'll never be able to finish it...let alone get it published"

"you don't have time for that...you have [a baby, a home, a husband, a dog, an unruly head of hair] to take care of"

"you should probably just check your email and Facebook twelve million times that would be much more productive"

So I have to ask, what is it in us that makes us afraid to succeed? To extend ourselves and take risks? I am so fearful and scared to death of failing that Mr. Awesome has slowly been trying to push me off the cliff, taking those risks for me. He's gone so far as to not allow me to work until I've given 110% in pursuing this dream of mine. So I sit here and look at pages and pages of notes, pictures I've gathered for inspiration, character descriptions and difficult plot points, chapter after chapter and I think: One of the words we picked for this year was CONFIDENCE!!

"Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative (or creation) there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would otherwise never have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one's favor all manner of incidents and meetings and material assistance which no man would have believed would have come his way." - W.H. Murray

I saw this quote on a friends website today and spoke to me in regards to my plans for the year. It inspired such confidence in me that I had to share it...but of course now I must get back to my book:)

Have a wonderful Monday!!