"High?" Concept

If you get what "high concept" is, I'm seriously jealous.

I want to know. I've tried to know.

Last spring, I listened eagerly to a really great workshop that HarperCollins editor Jordan Brown gave on "High Concept." And I still came out with no idea.

I get that there's something about being able to sum up the work in one sentence.

But the "Books" section of the San Francisco Chronicle does this with 40 books every week.

And I went through my bookshelf, and could apply "High Concept" to everything in there.

Magic Treehouse # 36: Blizzard of the Blue Moon: Jack and Annie search New York for a unicorn tapestry that will bring hope to the Great Depression.

Pete Hautman's Godless: Four middle-American teens make up their own religion that becomes exactly what they're trying to avoid.

Barbara Kingsolver's The Poisonwood Bible: A missionary family is more changed by Africa than Africa is changed by it.

It seems to me that anything can be High Concept.

Wikipedia is no help.

Okay, I get the "concept" part. But what the heck is that "high?"

Finding Nemo's Lovely Bones

Last year at the fab SCBWI Conference, Delacorte editor Krista Marino plugged pitches that marry one existing title with another. Like ___ Meets ___.

This year, HarperCollins hottie Jordan Brown reinforced the same thing.

I couldn't think of anything last year to apply to my WIP. But this year, it totally came to me.

Drain is "Finding Nemo" meets The Lovely Bones.

I know...that's pretty out there.

But "risk," right. The thing we heard over and over and over again.

(The picture is an ANGEL fish. Get it???)

What I Learned So Far At The Writing Conference

It's been 11 months, and I'm at the same conference in the same hotel. I had the same first dinner at Pasha Grill, only this time, author and wonderful human Mitali Perkins was there, too, and we were talking about gyros.

It's been 11 months since the last SCBWI Western Washington Conference, and paranormal is dominating, and voice is still the deciding factor in publication.

The same Starbucks coffee is dripping from the same endless vats, and Kim Baker is still running around, making sure the keynote speakers are all wired and starting on time.

It's mostly the same, here, after 11 months, but it's incredibly different, too.

Because last night, when I stepped onto the Redmond Town Center cobblestones, I realized how much of my life has changed.

After what was undoubtedly the toughest year of 39 for me, I learned more than I thought I would here--just by getting out of the same car: that I am enormously blessed that my husband really loves me, that our daughter might be sick, but that inside she's the same girl she's always been. I learned that if I never publish, there are four amazing people in a little gray cottage in Ashland who think I'm brilliant and talented and can fry up a serious pancake. I learned that, though I may be missing the three-book deal, I'm a survivor because I came through 333 days of a lot of crap, and I'm still breathing, at least, and maybe even smiling a little bit.

And after all that, I can definitely twist up my plot a little, as HarperCollins Editor Jordan Brown suggested today. I can put on my striped hat and let creativity free flow, like former Farrar Straus & Giroux editor Lisa Graff said. I can take big risks with character and plot, as Egmont Funny Girl Elizabeth "L-Bone" Law urged.

I can and I will do all of those things, but I'll hug my handsome husband more, too, and I'll tell my daughter how smart and strong and pretty she is, and I'll kick the soccer ball around with my boys, and I'll let my laundry pile up to the ceiling.

I'll be glad--I'll be grateful--that I have a gift--that no novel could possibly give me.