Beyond the Fair

Yesterday was a full, whirlwind day.  Long meetings in the morning, walking the floor of the Javits Center for the annual American International Toy Fair in the afternoon, then running off to a workshop in the evening to learn about writing the news for kids.

Toy fair is a fluorescent lit, starburst try-me shout, wow wow, look here spectacle.  Never good for someone who has a fear of crowded spaces, who panics when over-stimulated with bright lights and loud noises.

At some point, I became delirious, nearly falling over in tearful laughter when someone pointed out a baby-doll with a toilet and a little poop inside it that disappears when you flush, leaving me with flashbacks of a doll I had as a little girl, who came with green-slime baby food that went straight through her pliable pink lips and out her butt into a diaper, which was both thrilling and repulsive at the same time.  

So with head aching, armpits sweating (crowds, crowds, too many crowds), thinking about rubber-bodied baby dolls regurgitating green slime, I found myself in some dark corner of baby sippy-cups with flexible handles and looked up.  Windows.  I had forgotten the Javits Center had windows. I could see sky. And the hint of some gray cloud.

Of course I shouldn't have, of course I'm sure that my badge didn't allow access there, but I walked behind the black curtain skirting this building of trade booths, and there, beyond the spit up and break down of the show behind the show, beyond carts and boxes and tape and scrap, beyond a building of people buying and selling and shouting the magic of play or childhood or something so irrevocably lost it hurts my heart, was one of the most beautiful sunsets I'd ever seen.    

Toys and Puppies

I'm fuzzy today.  Nose stuffed, ears clogged, throat scratchy.  Most likely the result of every member of my team at work being sick.  

But it promises to be a whirlwind week because of New York City Toy Fair (massive sensory overload.) And it also happens to be what I have dubbed 'the most wonderful time of the year' (and I full-out sing the carol as I prance to Madison Square Garden) i.e. the week The Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show comes to to town. 

I will be attending toy fair for work.  There are dinners, meetings, and hours spent walking the Javits Center floor.  I'll also attend the dog show tomorrow, as I do every year, a most romantic Valentine's date with Sudafed and tissues, trying to figure out how best to smuggle an Alaskan Malamute out the door.  Perhaps it is too emotional of a time for me to attend because I will still be reeling from the news that our landlords refuse to allow us to adopt a dog, which we were seriously considering, until they put the proverbial foot down just this past Saturday.

But we march on.

Every year these events fall within days of eachother.  This year they overlap.  It is an embarrassment of riches. 

Being overwhelmed with toys and puppies is not a bad way to live.   

Holy Cow That Actually Stuck

I want to write a little bit more about the SCBWI conference.  The keynote speaker, Chris Crutcher, (described as one of the most successful and frequently banned authors of realistic fiction for teens) was incredible.  If I could bottle that speech up and send it off to all of you, I would.  But I can't. So I urge you to listen to his interviews on YouTube.

My favorite quote in the speech:

 The truth, as you know it, is what will get you published.

And I heard a lot of that throughout the conference. 

Write what you love. 

Your work will always find the right readers. 

If there's heart in your writing, it will shine through. 

A lot of agents and editors spoke of how they find what they want in a book and fall in love, stars in their eyes, fates aligning, I know it when I see it.

And then the harsh cold reality of a well-respected panelist: Make no mistake about it.  We're looking for best-sellers.  This is a 'hits' business. 

Ouch.

But we already know this.  Publishers are out there, molding best-sellers, throwing all of their publicity dollars into big glitzy series and in-your-face books that yell loudly.  At first this depressed me.  To think of it exclusively as best-seller or nothing. 

But then I stepped back. 

I know a little bit about what it is like to work in a hits business, working in the toy business. And no one could have possibly predicted the hits over the years: ugly babies delivered by a stork (Cabbage Patch Kids), a vibrating, giggling monster (Tickle-Me-Elmo), mechnical hamsters (Zhu Zhu Pets), fluorescent trolls (um...trolls), wacko alien plushes singing (Sing-A-Ma-Jigs), gumball machine treat playsets (Squinkies) or rubberband animals on your wrists (Silly Bandz).  And it should be noted that these are big-scale hits.  There are many, many more small-scale hits too.

Everyone who worked on these toys will tell you: they knew.  They knew they had a hit. They planned it that way.  Of course.

I am here to tell you, as someone on a team of people behind two of these hits (and when I say 'behind' I mean, I was in the very last row, trying desperately to see over big hair) that they. did. not. know.  In fact, they threw it against the wall and stood back in stunned silence, completely unprepared for the holy-cow-that-actually-stuck result.

In the toy industry, all the glitz and glamour items with big marketing campaigns and humongous advertising budgets sell.   They sell because they are deemed safe. 

But, make no mistake about it, they are not hits.
The hits, both big and small, come as surprises, when a risk is taken.  And the risks dictate what will later be safe to sell.  I think that's important to remember.

As It Turns Out: Somebody Likes This Blog

Thank you to the lovely, talented Lisa Galek for honoring me with my first ever blogging award: The Honest Scrap Blogger Award. Apparently, I'm honest. Which is quite ironic given the fact that I'm a fiction writer. Mwahahahaha! I write lies! All lies!

I have to share ten things about myself and share this award with other honest bloggers. So here goes...

1. For quite a long time I have had the story of a 16 year old girl in my head but had never written for a young adult audience. So, I was pretty scared to write it. This week, I officially decided to take the plunge. I hope all of you YA writers will welcome me with open arms and loving hearts and help me not be so scared.

2. I wrote a novel when I was 11 years old called "Ten Is Enough." In the coming weeks I plan to subject all of you to a few excerpts. Get excited!

3. I love to cook and I love to eat. I am obssessed with the farm to table craze and I belong to a CSA which forces me to figure out how to cook with things like 12 pounds of Kale.

4. I have lived in New York state for 27.5 of 30 years. 2 years were spent in Boston. .5 in the UK.

5. Of the 27.5 years in New York, 1.5 of them were spent in Astoria, Queens. 17 of them were spent in a town called Hicksville which is on the semi-north shore of Long Island. (Yes, it's called Hicksville.) 3.5 of them were spent in Ithaca. 4 of them were spent on the island of Manhattan. 1.5 of them were spent in Brooklyn.

6. I currently live in Brooklyn, in a neighborhood technically called the Columbia Waterfront District. Some people call it Red Hook. Others call it Carroll Gardens. I call it no-man's land because it is a 10 minute walk from the subway. I live with my boyfriend, Tyler.

7. I am an only child but I like to think I play well with others. Unless you want to borrow my bike, in which case, I'll cry.

8. I work at a toy company as a writer and producer. In other words, if you push a button on a toy, I wrote, recorded, edited, and produced all the music and speech you hear. Every time I tell people what I do, they ask me if working at a toy company is like the movie Big. I am here to tell you, it is nothing like the movie Big.

9. I loooooove dresses and skirts. From May to September, I do not wear pants. In the winter, I wear the same clothes but I put turtlenecks and wool tights underneath them.

10. I really love to blog and read your blogs. This whole 'I write, you read' then 'you write, I read' thing makes me really happy.

I would like to extend this award to the following bloggers:

Sharon Mayhew at Random Thoughts, who was my first blogging friend. She is as sweet as cake and writes about cake. I plan to to buy all of her children's books when they are published and give them to my kids.

Lori H. Walker, who always has so many thoughtful, interesting things to say about writing and teaching on her blog.

Karen at The Oliva Reader who reads and reviews the kinds of books I like to read on her blog. We are encouraging one another in our month of writing and I'm very excited.

Kerri Arista because her songs and her words are beautiful and honest and I'm excited she is writing a book.

Christine at Inwardly Digesting because I've just discovered her blog and I like it very much.