What a weekend! I came back home at 8pm Sunday from a weekend in Sydney. No, I wasn’t up there to see the two large ships in Sydney harbor or the soccer final or any of the other myriad things happening in Sydney that weekend but I was at a conference. At the Hughenden Hotel around 120 other writers and illustrators from all over Australia and from New Zealand gathered to talk, share and learn more of the writing, illustrating and publishing industry.
A number of these people I had met online. It was good to be able to put faces to names. Good too to hear publishers talk about what they are looking for in manuscripts. Good to hear about the unique partnership between author, illustrator and editor in creating the best selling and award winning picture book, Diary of a Wombat, which has been translated and published in many countries including France, Germany, Japan, USA, etc.
It was a weekend of networking with other writers, sharing experiences and also taking in the input from various speakers including, from USA:
Ellen Hopkins, whose verse novels tackle hard hitting issues like drugs and teenage suicide.
Julie Romeis former editor at Bloomsbury and now editor at Chronicle Books
Although tiring, (exhausting might be more the word!) as concentrating and taking information can be, the conference was filled with practical help. However all the note taking in the world won’t mean anything unless that translates into action. Unless I and each of us who were at the conference let it affect what we do. It might mean changes need to be made in the way of writing, editing, preparing a submission and deciding which publishers to approach and who.
In the same way, it is no good reading the bible and then going back to exactly what we were doing before. We need to think about the words we read and see how they apply to our lives. We need to determine those changes we might make to incorporate the principles taught in the passage we have read into our daily lives.
Is this how you read God’s Word, looking for what He has to say to you and the changes you need to make? If not, it should be. As James reminds us, We need to be not only hearers but doers of the word, James 1:22.
Please visit these related blogs
Are you letting God speak to you?
Practical christianity – Matching words and actions
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