How a librarians' conference changed me

(And the pdf for SLA conference delegates)

On Friday, I travelled to Sheffield to speak at the School Library Association conference. I nearly didn’t get there but I am beyond glad I did. Let me tell you what happened.

But first, here’s the promised pdf of my presentation, What is the Always-Online 21st Century Doing to Teenage (and Other) Brains? (The other handouts are in this post here.)

21stcbrains

3.21MB ∙ PDF file

Download

Download

I woke that morning with the beginnings of a migraine. Once a migraine gets hold, I am incapable of doing anything, going anywhere, even if my life depended on it. I can barely move and any movement brings horrendous nausea. I had two hours for it to decide whether it was staying or going and in that two hours I’d also have to pack. It wasn’t looking good. I wasn’t looking good, as my husband agreed before he left for London. I was all set to let everyone down and I was trying to work out how to say it.

Against all the odds, the migraine retreated and just became a slight headache, which I can deal with. A quick pack and I was ready to go.

People! So many people! Friday is the new Saturday and everyone was going somewhere, loudly and pushily. Most of them seemed to be going on my train. I started to wish myself back to my peaceful garden office in my very peaceful small village. I had a seat but the train was so packed and with so many people standing that I had no chance of getting my laptop out. So I just settled down to listen to the conversations and push the receding headache further away.

Four young people going to the Taylor Swift concert in Edinburgh spread myriad boxes of beads on their table and the two young women taught the two young men how to make friendship bracelets while they all discussed the songs they were expecting to hear. They were sweet and funny and polite and happy. They were planning to give and sell the bracelets to fellow fans and they talked about their strategies for that.

At the venue in Sheffield I was greeted warmly by the friendly librarians on the organising team. A quick check-in and freshen up and I went down to where my talk would happen. A HUGE room, FULL of tables. Yikes. The geography of a room is always important and the first thing I need to do is get a sense of it, work out where I’ll stand, how I’ll see everyone and also see the screen.

Chatting to the Cathi, who was going to be hosting my talk, was nearly a disaster as she came very close to making me cry. She told me something about how the students she works with love my books and that they really have an impact. I stumbled out something about how good that was to hear because I spend my days sitting in my garden office and have no idea if people are reading my books. She looked at me with a look of disbelief and said something along the lines that surely I must know how important my books are. “I often don’t know,” I said, “so it’s lovely to hear that. Thank you.”

And then another delegate came up and said the same thing.

“See?” said Cathi.

And then, for goodness sake, another one came and said the same. I was welling up, honestly. And then I had to speak to the audience…

I’m telling you that to make the point that in-person, face-to-face, is incredibly important. I was doing a talk about our online lives and here was the perfect illustration of how online lives are not enough. We can do amazing things online but we can’t touch people. We can’t see into their eyes and their hearts. We can’t reach people. We don’t know about people until we talk to them.

That was the first thing I learnt. It reminded me that my introvert tendencies need to be managed and nudged out of retreat sometimes. Yes, my introvert tendencies are good and healthy and right, too, but they are not enough.

After the talk, I gave away a load of books from my shelves because I’m decluttering in advance of my new life writing fiction again instead of any more of these non-fiction books that people apparently love so much! And during the giveaway I had lots more conversations that made me think maybe I should write some more of these books that people love so much…

But then, during the drinks before dinner, a conversation happened

I will, later, find the woman I had this conversation with. Somehow, the fact that I’m working on a novel for young children got tangled with talking about the fact that I have small grandchildren. Smaller than the children I’d be writing this novel for. But something she said sparked something I said about one of my grandsons and we both looked at each other because in that moment, in front of us, was an idea for a picture book. If it works, you may one day read it and I will then be able to tell you in more detail how some face-to-face words between two strangers became an idea for a story.

Writers know that feeling of excitement when a new idea starts waving its arms. I now can’t wait to get down to writing it and seeing if I can make it work. I’ll need to wrangle its arms into a jacket. Not a straitjacket but a suitable jacket for a special story.

And then we won!

Dinner was fun, full of friendly chats, an excellent speech from the CEO of the SLA and a quiz. Which our table won! I have never been part of a winning quiz team before and I was particularly pleased to have contributed the answers to the grammar question and the Shakespeare question. It seems fitting!

The prize was wine and I left after a modest glass and before I could enjoy that too much.

What I lost and what I gained

I lost my feeling that my books are unread and my words unheard. I felt heard and appreciated by the audience of school librarians who I respect so much for the work they do.

I lost all the heavy books I’d brought to give away and I left feeling lighter.

I gained an idea for a picture book which I really want to write and it’s a long time since I had anything I really wanted to write. In fact, I told someone at the conference that I’d lost the joy of writing. I think I gained it back.

I gained the reminder that face-to-face conversations are essential and you never know what you’re going to gain from them and you never will know unless you make the effort.

And I gained the knowledge that what looks like a migraine and feels like a migraine doesn’t always grow into a migraine. I am so glad it didn’t that day, otherwise none of this would have happened.

Oh, and then…

When I got home, I found my first ripened strawberry of the year AND picked the first courgette AND dug up the first salad potatoes!