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MARSHALL - Everybody got their start somewhere, and Southwest Minnesota could be harboring the next Stephenie Meyer or Stan Lee.

About 500 area students, grades three through eighth, attended the 17th Annual Conference for Young Writers at Southwest Minnesota State University on Tuesday. In addition to presentations on writing, there were also sessions on drawing cartoons and art writing.

The kids say they learned a lot.

"I learned you shouldn't be nervous about people not liking your writing," said Christina Hanson of Marshall. "Even if they reject it, it doesn't mean it's not good."

She was enjoying the chance to write.

"It's fun," she said. "It's a good way to write down all the stuff you've done and you can look at it later."

Rachel Landmark and Ashton Stahl, both of Marshall, were more into the drawing tips.

"My favorite part was the drawing classes with Gary Harbo," Landmark said. "I've been to his classes and I knew everything he was talking about." She said what she learned was "how to draw some more and better."

"How to draw 3-D and cartoon characters," Stahl said was what she learned.

She enjoys drawing "because it's entertaining and it's something to do when I'm bored."

"In a culture that celebrates sports heroes and Hollywood stars, writing conferences celebrate books, authors, illustrators and the creative process," said Mary Casanova, an author of books for youngsters, including "Jess" and "Chrissa" of the American Girls series.

Casanova delivered the keynote address before the classes started and conducted two classes on "Writing Strong Beginnings."

"Whether they want to be an author or not, they will all have to write," she said. "This helps to demystify the process. Good writing is a craft that can be learned."

She hopes "they realize they all have stories to tell and story ideas are all around them."

That's one point she got across to the approximately 70 students in her session just after lunch.

She read some of her books and asked the kids to let her know when the conflict showed up in the story. The kids quickly raised their hands because conflict is an important part of the story and needs to be written in quickly, Casanova said. "Start a story close to where the conflict is introduced," she said.

She said they should show what the characters are going through by igniting the readers' senses. "The reader should feel like they are in the story," she said.

Casanova had the kids write the beginning of a story, then had four of them read what they had written and asked the other students for feedback on what they liked and what the writer had done well.

Guy Stewart also had the students who attended his class before lunch write and read it to a neighbor for feedback, but his students were to write a whole story.

Stewart was teaching a class on flash fiction.

"Flash fiction is fiction of extreme brevity - 1,000 words or less," he said. As long as you have a setting, character, plot, mood and point, you can have a complete story, Stewart said.

"To get long stories, write short stories," he said.

He asked the kids if they could write 337 words. Sure, they could.

He told them if they could write 337 words every day for nine years, they would have 1,091,000 words - or the 7-book Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling.

A ninth-grade science teacher, Stewart writes fiction on the side and works at a book store.

"I think it gives kids a voice in the world," he said of the ability to write. "People listen to the written word, and they may not be as concerned how old they are as they are the message."