Elana Roth at the Caren Johnson Literary Agency

(Elana's the one on the left)

I spent part of the weekend at the SCBWI conference here in Portland, Oregon, where Elana Roth was a guest speaker.

Elana is building her list. She is with the Caren Johnson Literary Agency. She accepts no snail mail submissions. She spoke about the Author-Agent relationship at the SCBWI Oregon Spring Conference.

She made a great comparison between looking for an agent and looking for a lasting relationship. Relationships begin with dating then it can progress—if you’re lucky enough to find a great match—to marriage. And if things don’t work out so well, there’s the breakup or the dreaded D word: Divorce.

This is like querying an agent, signing with the agent, and sometimes - yes - breaking up and moving on.

Elana added a lot of humor to her talk, dispersing words of wisdom along with a few giggles and smiles along the way.

She also talked a little bit about query letters and the three separate paragraphs each author should include:

1) The book
2) The hook
3) The cook

She explained, every query should tell something about your book, what makes it special and end with a bit about yourself as the author.

A STEP IN THE WRITE DIRECTION with Noa Wheeler and Elana Roth

Noa Wheeler from Henry Holt Books for Young Readers and Elana Roth from Caren Johnson Literary Agency shared their words of wisdom with us at the Shilo Inn near the Portland Airport.

I spent Friday at the SCBWI conference in Portland, Oregon.

We were soooo lucky to have an editor, Noa Wheeler, and an agent, Elana Roth, in attendance.

This was a WOW Them With Words session: or a large-group critique session.

Each author brought 30 copies of the first page of their manuscript to share. Each conference attendee took a copy to write their comments and notes on it.

The author got up in front of the podium and read the page for the audience. All of us in the audience wrote our own comments, while Noa and Elana took turns giving their verbal comments for everyone to hear.

I learned a lot.

One of the most common comments was Show don’t Tell—easier said than done.

I can’t wait to go back tomorrow for more.