NCTE Orlando Part 1

Arrived in sunny Orlando for the NCTE annual conference, checked into hotel and was greeted by the Mickey Mouse (towels) on my bed:

Can you find Mickey Mouse on the shower curtain?

Then I made a quick sweep of the exhibit area and ran into some familiar faces:

Me and Little Brown editor, Alvina Ling


Me, Peepy, and author Lisa Yee



Me and Peepy

Me and Dial/Penguin editor, Kathy Dawson

That night, I attended a wonderful Macmillan-hosted dinner with teachers and other children's literature folks.

Me and Elaine Magliaro.
(Elaine and I had been on the same 2-hour delayed flight from Boston)

Me and my pal, teacher, blogger Karen Terlecky from Dublin, Ohio



Denise Johnson, professor of children's literature; College of William and Mary (left) me and Virginia teacher Amy Moser

NCTE Conference

A picture is worth a thousand words...

which is a good thing because I'm not writing a thousand words.

The beautiful Philadelphia train station:

Farrar, Straus & Giroux exhibit booth:

FSG marketing team extraordinaire: Katie Halata (left) and Jeanne McDermott:



Me and Lauren Wohl (right), Associate Publisher FSG/Roaring Brook/First Second:

(l to r) Me, Peepy, Lisa Yee:

Me and author Jo Knowles (right):

Karen Terlecky (left) and me:

Everyone rushing to get to my author blogging panel. (Actually, it's the Philadelphia marathon. I think Laurie Halse Anderson is in there somewhere.)

The Author Blogging panel, organized by Denise Johnson, Associate Professor of Reading, Language and Literacy at The College of William and Mary (l to r) Justine Larbalestier, Laurie Halse Anderson, me, and Lisa Yee:

Because she's always late (hey, that's what Justine said), she missed the photo pose above, so here is a very blurry Maureen Johnson (she's much sharper in person):

Lisa telling the audience how many drafts she does for each book:

A great time was had by all.

IRA Part 2

I finally got to meet the famous Peepy!!!! And look who he brought along!

(l to r) Deborah Garfinkle, Lisa Yee, me, Peepy)

Me and Peepy

The end

In an interview with Lisa Yee over at HipWriterMama, Lisa said:

"I always write my endings first and then write my way toward them. It’s always the first 50 pages that cause me the most difficulty. So I overwrite and then cut, cut, cut away."

That sounds absolutely heavenly to me.

I confess that my first reaction was a jealousy so severe I longed to crush Peepy with my bare hands. (You must visit Lisa's blog to understand that.)

But, fortunately, that feeling was short-lived and I moved on to feeling the love of Lisa for showing me the possibility of a new and heavenly writing process.

Having just come out the other end of a torturous tunnel of hair-tearing, tandrem-inducing, blindly-barreling-through first draft with no vision of the end in sight until the last lap, well, I've decided that from now on, I'm going to write like Lisa Yee.

I'm going to write the ending first.

There, that was easy.

Now, excuse me while I dial up Lisa and find out how the heck she does that....

"Peepy? Oh, hi...Barbara O'Connor here. Is Lisa there?"