Mitali Perkins, author of ELEVEN published children’s books, including Rickshaw Girl, and 
her newest Forward Me Back to You–just released last month, spoke at Austin’s SCBWI conference.
Among many useful details from her keynote speech, she said:
“You don’t control the market. You can control your craft.”
So work on your writing. Read a lot, in the genre you want to be published in, in other genres, in fiction and non-fiction. Write. Revise. Edit. Revise. Edit. Write. Write. Write.
“Don’t quit. Never quit in that time of desolation.”
When you most feel like quitting, don’t. Keep going until you get out of that feeling and THEN you can decide rationally and correctly whether you should quit.
Consider yourself a professional–and ACT like one.
Your authorial presence should be felt wherever you put your name out (and we all should know that we NEED to get our name out). Realize that anything about you online will be associated with you the author. Is it going to enhance your reputation? Work to make sure that what comes up does.
Mitali Perkins also encouraged authors, who are struggling with multiple rejections, with her own experience. “You think you’ve had a lot of rejections?!” kind of information.