Monday, June 23, 2008

Words in the Woods

Just got back from Words in the Woods, a wonderful children's writers retreat near Springfield, Illinois. Joining us for the retreat were speakers Barry Goldblatt (agent extraordinaire); Holly Black (author of the Spiderwick Chronicles, among other excellent books); and Namrata Tripathi (super-savvy editor, Hyperion Books for Children). For me, one of the most valuable aspects of the retreat were the suggestions and feedback from my critique group on my manuscript. I'm intent on finally finishing my revision of Into the Fire this summer, and I came away with some great ideas. From the speakers, lots of great stuff on plot, building characters, setting, and revisions.

The super-duper organizers of the retreat, the Springfield Scribes, wrote some incredibly funny skits to introduce some of the sessions. I'll try to post a video of one of the skits later. In the meantime, I got to play Pink Pain in the character catwalk. Apparently I had an alter ego I never knew about:

Yes, that's a whip I'm wielding. And I'm told I handled it convincingly.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Woo hoo! Hot stuff! Now, tell me because I can't see in the pictures, what did your footwear choice end up being?

Sara Latta said...

Black boots. Oh, yeah.

Anonymous said...

With that getup if you ever get sick of the writing gig you could redecorate one of your flooded basement rooms, throw up a web cam and charge admission. :)

Sara Latta said...

Heh, heh. I'm not sure my acting skills go that far.

Vivian Mahoney said...

Awesome picture! The retreat sounds great, too.

BTW, my public library featured your book, Stella Brite, last week for the 1st and 2nd grader summer book club! Wahoo!

Sara Latta said...

Hey, Vivian, thanks for letting me know about my book being featured! Yay!