For the first time in years, I missed the SCBWI Midsouth
Fall Conference. I missed making new friends and catching up with old ones,
talking on and on about everything. I missed the entertaining and inspiring keynote
speakers, the sessions full of up to date information and trends in writing and
publishing, the editors, agents, and authors I’ve been wanting to meet. But
maybe most of all I missed the encouraging words from friends, strangers,
presenters, everybody there.
An SCBWI Conference is like a magic elixir, good for
whatever ails a writer.
Writer’s block?
Gone.
Ideas come pouring in.
Discouraged?
No more.
You know where to start and how to go.
Down in the dumps?
No
more. You’re on top of the world.
Lack of confidence?
Gone.
You’re the best writer since Moses.
Dried up and weary?
Rejuvenated.
You can’t wait to get back to your desk.
How can one little old SCBWI Conference do all that? With
encouraging words, smiles, things to learn and things to try, and the greatest
people in the world—ones involved in writing and publishing books for young
people.
Since I didn’t get to the Midsouth Fall Conference this
year, I’ve been wondering how I could receive and share the kind of lift the
conference gives.
Then it hit me. Encouraging words. That could be the answer.
I’d give everybody I meet a smile and a few encouraging words. The grocery
checker, the trash collector, friends, strangers. Smiles have power and they’re
contagious. So are encouraging words.
Here’s how it went. I was walking in the park, as usual thinking
about how to solve a problem in my novel when an attractive young woman smiled
at me. I smiled back and slowed my pace a little as I went by.
“Wait!” she called. So I stopped and she said, “You look
great! How old are you?”
Whoa! What a question to ask a person as old as Methuselah!
But since she asked, I answered.
“Wow!” she said, and her whole face beamed. “You got it. You
go, girl!”
What a boost! I really had it! With the biggest smiley face
you’ve ever seen, I went, bouncing down the trail like a ten year old.
That’s what a few encouraging words from a stranger can do.
Anxiety in a man’s heart weighs him down,
but a good word makes him glad.
Proverbs 12:25
