Fall Philly Recap, Exciting Chapter News, and Call for Blog Submissions by Lori Ann Palma

Happy November!

As you put away your costumes and recover from your Halloween celebrations, the Eastern PA SCBWI team is gearing up for some exciting changes. Before I dive into those details, I want to start with a big thank you to everyone who attended Fall Philly last weekend. We had a great turnout at the beautiful Warwick Hotel in Rittenhouse Square. I hope you were inspired by our faculty, including Diana Rodriguez Wallach, Adam Lehrhaupt, Becky Birtha, Elizabeth Kann, and Jennifer Hansen Rolli. And we can’t forget to mention our awesome agent faculty as well, who participated in pitch sessions throughout the day. Cheers to Adriana Dominguez, Linda Camacho, Beth Phelan, Kelly Peterson, Jordy Albert, Danielle Burby, Melissa Edwards, Charlie Olsen, Sean McCarthy, Christa Heschke, and Carrie Howland!

If you attended Fall Philly, I’d love to hear about your experience, either in the comments below or as a blog post for Eastern Penn Points. More information on that is further within this post, but first, at Fall Philly, Kim Briggs, our awesome Co-Regional Advisor, made some exciting announcements about changes to the Eastern PA SCBWI team:

• Alison Green Myers, former Assistant Regional Advisor, will fill the Co-Regional Advisor role that was recently held by Donna Boock. Thank you Donna for all your contributions and good luck in Florida! And congratulations to Alison!
• The Assistant Regional Advisor role previously held by Alison will be filled by our own Blog Coordinator Extraordinaire, Lindsay Bandy. Congratulations Lindsay!
• Lastly, to assist Lindsay with the blog duties, I have accepted the role of Co-Blog Coordinator. I’m looking forward to being part of the Eastern PA SCBWI team!

Call for Submissions
In the new role of Co-Blog Coordinator, I will be accepting your blog submissions and posting them to Eastern Penn Points. As some of you may know, we currently have monthly themes that you can find under the Submission Guidelines/Monthly Themes heading at the top of this page. For November, our theme is “Giving Thanks.” With Fall Philly still fresh in your mind, you may want to share what you learned from pitching agents, or how you came away feeling inspired by something or someone in particular. As another topic suggestion, you might you might wish to write about how you balance the busy holiday season with your creative life.

If you have a great idea for a post but don’t feel it fits with the monthly theme, send it anyway! The themes are there as a guide, but they are not a rule. If you have your own blog, perhaps you might want to choose one of your past posts and send it to us. Recycling great content is another way you might wish to contribute.

Because we know your time is limited, it’s important to let you know what you get out of submitting blog posts to Eastern Penn Points.

Save Time, Make Friends
Maintaining a blog is hard—if you run your own, then you know this is true! Coming up with ideas for posts, finding copyright free images or developing your own, plus keeping to a regular posting schedule can be overwhelming. By submitting an occasional post or a scheduled series of posts to Eastern Penn Points, you get the best of both worlds. Your thoughts about writing and/or illustrating reach thousands of people, and you don’t have to do any of the formatting or blog management yourself. To give you an example, I started out by submitting two posts a month, which was not only manageable for me, but also provided me with a chance to expand my reach on an established blog. It’s allowed me to connect with more people, which is always the best return for my time investment.

Build Your Online Presence
If you’re a writer or illustrator with the intention of querying agents in the future, or you’re currently querying, having a few articles on our blog gives you an online presence. Most agents will Google your name prior to offering representation, and while you don’t need thousands of followers on every social media site out there, it does help if you have a small platform to build on.

Fill in That Empty Bio
Blogging for Eastern Penn Points also provides you with a short bio to place in your query letter—you can say you are a contributor to the Eastern PA SCBWI blog. If you have no other publishing credits to speak of, this is a huge benefit, because it shows you are active within a community of children’s writers and illustrators.

If those reasons haven’t convinced you to join us in the blogging fun, here are a few other points to remember:

• Posts don’t have to be long…500 words will do it, with a maximum of 1,500.
• If you can’t commit to one or two posts a month, that’s okay! One post every few months, or even less, works for us. We’re not going to hassle you!
• Posts can also be about a local writing event that may interest our readers, or a review of a book you read on writing craft.
• Your perspective matters. Even if you think we’ve written about it before, your contribution is unique because it’s from you.

As we slide toward winter and a chill begins to creep into the air, I hope you’ll start thinking up some blog ideas. Lindsay and I would love to hear from you! Submissions can be emailed to me at lu_lat@yahoo.com.