Once again, fascinating tweets from the NY SCBWI conference got me re-reading notes from conferences past. I did this last year with Susan Cooper’s keynote speech. Current Oscar buzz for HUGO makes me think my notes from hearing Brian Selznick’s speech, which he gave soon after THE INVENTION OF HUGO CABRET was published, might inspire others. So here they are, from the February 2007 NY SCBWI conference:
Artist/writer Brian Selznick gave a great, funny inspiring talk on Sunday morning. If you ever get a chance to hear him speak, do it. He’s entertaining and enlightening. I took a lot of notes, but they’re all over the place. He discussed his own creative process a lot, which was fascinating, but difficult to transcribe in note-form because he used a lot of illustrations. So I’ll just copy a list of things that might be interesting:
Children are the most demanding and intelligent audience of all.
He’s always insecure and angry and frustrated when he starts a new project. Always. And then he always forgets this is how he felt. He wanted to mention this to help us, and himself maybe the next time, remember that this is *part of the process!* You ALWAYS doubt yourself and think you can’t bring your idea to fruition and wonder if you have any clue as to what you’re doing.
He thinks WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE is a perfect picture book. He said if you study it, it can teach you everything you need to know about the form. He likes how during the Wild Rumpus the words fall away and the reader has to do the work of making the story in collaboration with the illustrations. This is something he likes to use in his own storytelling, particularly his recent book, THE INVENTION OF HUGO CABRET–the narrative power of a sequence of pictures.
He talked a lot about all the different sources of Hugo Cabret—the various films and stories, etc. that sparked for him and then slowly all drew together, weaving themselves into this new story—his book. It was fascinating. And it harked back in an interesting way to Susan Cooper’s talk of compost piles and things needing to simmer together until the right moment comes to start telling the story.
He closed by reminding us that of course you’ll feel like you aren’t up to your own ideas. That’s how he felt almost the whole time he was working on Hugo Cabret. Also—bad art, bad illos, bad writing, are *essential* to the process of creating something.
And don’t forget the delicious thrill of when something goes so, so right.
