Alex

I thought I’d give a heads up to Sarah McIntyre’s post about Society of Authors’ Talk on school visits. There’s lots of useful tidbits if you check the #CWIG or #SchoolVisits hashtag on Twitter.

I do a lot of school events, and I know for a fact that a lot of this stuff is what you can only learn from experience. It’s probably incredibly useful for any new authors or illustrators out there. And speaking of that there’s a great CWIG Conference if you’re a children’s writer/illustrator. It’s prohibitively expensive, which is why I won’t be going (as much as I’d love to), but if you can afford it you won’t regret it.

Sarah’s doing a great job promoting the children’s side of the Society of Authors. Back when I started out with the Mousehunter, I jumped at the chance of becoming a member. It was the thing that said I’d made it, and being a part of the Society was like joining the Dennis the Menace club (but for grown-ups).

There wasn’t much going on for children’s writers there at that point – SCWBI was and is far more socially organised – and a hideous experience at a Society event all about reading your work aloud meant I never renewed. (I still get nightmares of being critiqued by a load of fusty adult book writers. I definitely didn’t go there to be critiqued.)

Any way, this event looked great, and I wish it had been more like this when I joined 5 years ago – heck, if it keeps doing things like this, maybe I’ll join again soon.