BYU Writers and Illustrators Workshop 2009

Our workshop group of awesome writers!

Me with the fabulous Janette Rallison who is amazing! :)

I had an amazing opportunity this past week to go to the 10th annual BYU Writing and Illustrating for Children Workshop. It was such a wonderful opportunity and I really feel blessed that I was able to attend. It was amazing how it all worked out. Sunday, May 31 I was sitting in our combined Church Priesthood/Relief Society meeting about self reliance. they were talking about education and someone mentioned that if you didn't go to college you should go to adult ed and continuing education. A woman in my ward raised her hand and mentioned something about a writers conference going on at BYU that week. I have to admit that I cornered her immediaitely following teh meeting asking her about it. My first novel is about 3/4 of the way done and I am very serious about it. I have already finished 2 picture books as well. I have always written and I enjoy it deeply but it was just in April that I really decided I was going to finish a novel and submit it to Agents seriously. Anyway, she told me about the conference but it was for the 8-12 and my family was going to be leaving on the 5th for a family vacation in California. It was sad. I went home that night and checked out the website and just so wanted to go. Shad encouraged me to go even agreeing to take the girls on vacation by himself so I could attend. I found a babysitter that would go with him but it just didn't feel right. It would have been our first family vacation so I decided I needed to pick family first and go on the vacation.

On Wednesday Shad's Dad called to ask when we would be leaving and what not...Shad told him we were leaving that Friday and he informed Shad that his Grandma would probably not be alive when we returned. Shad asked his Dad if we should go see her before we left and he said no, she was just sleeping and her dementia was bad. We decided to remember her as we had seen her last.

Thursday morning we received a phone call at about 7:30 AM that Grandma Williams had passed away at 5:30 that morning. We decided we needed to cancel our vacation plans so we could pay our respects to his Grandmother. It was a hard decision but not really, we knew we needed to do that. Shad suggested that since we would be home I should go to the workshop at BYU. I called that Thursday to sign up and the morning workshop sessions were, of course, full. There were a few spots left in the afternoon-only session, however. I was sad since the morning was 8:30-12:30 every day working with a critique group of 13 people plus 1 Author on my own manuscript, but I understood. I was registering VERY late.

I asked the guy on the phone who I was registering with if anyone ever canceled or if they had a waiting list and he said No, not usually this late. I asked him to sign me up for afternoons only and left it at that. I was excited to go to the afternoon breakout sessions anyway! Friday morning while I was picking up Paige at Kindergarten, Shad, who had been told by his boss to take they day off due to the loss took a call from the guy at BYU. Apparently someone had called to cancel and he had remembered me and that i had wanted so much to get in to the morning session so he had looked me up (remembered my name!) and called to see if I wanted the spot.

I was so excited! I even got in the workshop I wanted with the incomparable, awesome Janette Rallison who has written so many humorous YA novels and is just amazing! (look her up on Amazon and buy her stuff!) It was an amazing week. I met so many great people and learned SOOOO much. I feel it will help me greatly as I finish and edit my novel in preparation for submission to agents by the end of the summer. I will probably also send in my picture books. I am so grateful that all of this worked out and the blessing of going I can't even express it in words. Talking to an agent, and several editors from large publishing houses as well as tons of authors is just so amazing! What an awesome week!

Now comes the hard work of editing the novel, after all I've learned, and finishing it but I am ready for the task and excited about it! I think I owe Grandma Nay a HUGE thank you because I have this feeling that she wanted me to go to this. Thank you Grandma. We love you and miss you here but we know how happy you are where you are! If.....NO, when my first novel is published I am pretty sure her name will go in that dedication....