I wouldn’t say I feel necessarily obligated to compose a ‘What I Took Away From LTUE’ post but I find sharing what I learned with others helps me to focus on what I did learn.

Unlike last year I mostly avoided the panels that were more about the business end of writing – I was experiencing some anxiety over things like ‘jobs’ and ‘business’ over the weekend and figured those panels would probably make those anxieties worse – and instead focused on craft. I got some good advice about where to find not-your-run-of-the-mill folktales from around the world (excuse me as I wipe the drool from my chin), the role of the narrator in your story (you really should think about that guy more), how to show not tell (yeah this is definitely one of my weaknesses – I blame my childhood of reading fairytales that are mostly all tell, but how could I resist a good fairytale?), how to write engaging and dynamic dialogue (I actually went to two panels on dialogue), and how to write the final twist in your novel (I folded myself into a pretzel and now I can’t get out), and grammar (am; I, really, good, at; grammar- now?!) just to name a few. (And the rule for all these panels was; there are no rules that can’t be broken just be super sure you know what the heck you’re doing when you break them, or they might just break you… or your story… yeah it was probably that it will break your story.)

Finally, I loved the keynote address given by Kelly Barnhill, Newberry Award winning author of, The Girl Who Drank the Moon. She talked about having a really strange imagination – all authors do, get used to it – and some of the experiences in her past that have influenced her work including an old neighbor who saw the beauty in natures mistakes and gave them wings. It made me think about my own ugly story babies. They don’t always come out the way I was expecting, and many of them should probably never see the light of day, but they are my stories, a part of my journey, they are beautiful to me and sometimes I’m able to give them wings and let them fly.