Nikki Loftin

Archive for October, 2009

Prom For Writers

Let me check… yep, yep. I recognize this feeling. It’s the exact same way I felt when I got asked to go to the prom my sophomore year of high school. Butterflies in the stomach, stupid grin on my face, wondering if I could be dreaming.

But this time it’s not the captain of the gymnastics team who’s got me all aflutter. It’s my new literary agent, Suzie Townsend, of Fineprint Literary. (All the writers reading this just went “Squeeee!” All the others went “So?”) The contracts are on their way to New York — a few days ahead of me, coincidentally, as I am still attending the Backspace Conference next week. I’ll just be way more relaxed. Except I get to meet Suzie in person, and that makes me all “Does this manuscript make my butt look big?” and “What do possibly-successful-looking writers wear in NYC?” I guess I am as neurotic as all the other writers out there.

I am so hoping the prom analogy dies here, because I have pictures of that dress I wore. It was hideous, even for the 80s. I’m praying my manuscript won’t be. Must… revise… even… more….

Writing About Grandma

Last night, my Grandma fell and broke her ribs. Well, only two of them, but that’s enough when you’re 89. This is the Grandma I keep writing picture books and essays about (that’s her with her stapler in this month’s Skirt! essay). We’re beyond close. She taught me to bake cookies, to hang laundry, to cuss for the pure joy of it.  So of course I spent most of the day with her (she’s with Mom in Austin right now, but she had an appointment that couldn’t be shifted).

On top of the painkillers, Grandma has senile dementia/Alzheimer’s, so most of the day was spent in a very short conversational loop. But I had the chance to read my October essays to her — making your Grandma giggle is like making a baby laugh, pure joy — and watch TV with her between catnaps. You’ve never watched the cooking channel until you’ve watched it with Grandma; she kept muttering “I wish she would wash those vegetables she’s using,” and “She’s not going to rinse that fish?”  and “You’d think a professional would know to tie that long hair back.” (You might want to think about that, Sandra Dee. The health department will ding you for the hair.) Lunch was my homemade cajun ham and bean soup, fresh cornbread, and my dark chocolate walnut cookies. I’m pretty sure it tasted better than whatever that Barefoot Contessa was making. At least Grandma said so.

When she napped, I read the perfect book for a day with Grandma — A Year Down Yonder, by Richard Peck. I laughed, I cried. His Grandma was wonderful and terrible, mischievous, loyal, cussedly mean, and determined to make things right.  It made me wonder how many authors out there are writing picture books and novels about their dear, obstinate, peculiar Grandmas. I know I can’t seem to stop writing about mine.

Make Things Possible

I am home with a sick kid today, like most of the rest of North America, it seems. If you are home, too, or avoiding your writing, or waiting for a phone call, here’s a beautifully written, evocative essay that I found on the Editorial Ass(istant) website. The essay is by Alexander Chee, about his studies with Annie Dillard. Here’s my favorite part, Annie speaking:

Don’t worry about being original… Yes, everything’s been written, but also, the thing you want to write, before you wrote it, was impossible to write. Otherwise it would already exist. You writing it makes it possible.

I did not study with Annie Dillard, although I read her voraciously when I was at graduate school, flailing about for what it was I was “meant” to write. I had decided creative nonfiction about the Texas Hill Country was what I was meant to write for my thesis, at the very least, and found much to learn from in her work.

To all my writer friends: Go and make things possible today!

How Much Would You Pay A Publicist?

Oh, wow. So, last night I attended the monthly Writer’s League of Texas meeting. This one was  a very good panel, with authors Varian Johnson (a good speaker, and not so hard on the eyes), Stephanie Klein (a hoot!), and some other guy who writes terribly serious non-fiction about oil and energy and seemed very, very intense about the whole thing.

Also, there was a publicist. Now, don’t get me wrong: I’m sure she is a very good publicist. She mentioned Oprah a few (dozen) times, and seemed passionate about her work. But the thought of paying between $2,ooo – $10,000 a month to promote a novel is so far out of my realm of perception, it’s like trying to imagine the national deficit.

Yep, you read those numbers right — 2 to 10 THOUSAND a month. (If you clicked the deficit link, you probably didn’t read those numbers right. What comes after a hundred trillion? A squintillion?) When pressed, Probably Very Good Publicist shared that really, anyone can do this whole publicity/social media thing. “It’s common sense,” she said.

On that note, I would like to share today’s post on a favorite website with a cussword in the title. If you read romances, check out their “Best Of” list. Hilarious. Definitely check out their post on social media today, but be prepared to hear a whole lotta cussin’ going on.

Yes, lots of bad language. But I imagine that would be the same kind of language running through my head if and when I ever consider dropping $10,000 a month on promotion.

Never say never, though, right?

A Kinder, Gentler Workshop

When I was in graduate school, every semester the writers were required to take a “workshop” class. This was where you went to have your soul sucked out through your nostrils with coffee straws. Or at least that’s what it felt like. One of the Austin SCBWI members (and a phenomenal writer) Margo Rabb, wrote a piece about this. She tells it like it is/was. I’m with her on the tequila shots.

Today, I had the great good fortune to attend a kinder, gentler workshop at the REI store in Round Rock (yes, strange venue, with constant announcements about sales in the shoe department on the intercom) led by author Chris Eboch. Announcements aside, it was a delight. I went in with no expectations, since this was my first workshop in decades (and I knew that at the first sign of coffee straws, I was outta there), but it was very useful, and not at all painful. I think, in fact, I can use what I did today to dig myself out of the hole I was in last week on my new MG novel…

Plus, my friends Shelli and Lindsay were there, and I went upstairs and bought a new pair of shoes on sale right after the workshop. Those announcements worked!

New shoes make everything better. Now that I think of it,  if they had held our graduate writing workshops in a shoe store, that might have helped…

Nah.

I Would Like To Thank The Academy…

As Gertrude Stein said, “Silent gratitude isn’t much use to anybody.” So I wanted to take a quick moment to thank all my friends, family, and strangers from the Blogosphere for sending your lovely comments about my essays. THANK YOU!

Here’s a little payback for my writer friends: I discovered a writer blog by an Austin YA author, Brian Yansky. Very inspirational. Check it out! (The connection: I was getting ready to teach my Zumba class last week when one of my members, who knew I was a writer, asked if I knew her brother-in-law. Now I do! Can’t wait to meet him at an Austin SCBWI event. He sounds fascinating!

Now, I’m off to write another 2,000 words or so on a novel — and maybe another essay? I had an idea this morning… right after the dream where the aliens had me trapped in an old Victorian-style house, and they were trying to convince me that I really wouldn’t mind acting as one of their mindless Hosts. It’s amazing how effective my dream dead-bolts were against those aliens…

It’s All About Me

Okay, let’s just get this out there: Everything I write is autobiographical. I’m not going to tell the lie I learned in my graduate school writing workshops. I don’t make all this stuff up. Not really.

Well, I mean, of course I make it up. But what I’ve been noticing more and more is the things I write that are at least semi-autobiographical (ie: the characters in them are recognizably me/my family/friends/pets) are the only ones that get published/win prizes. So, sure, I’ve written some cute little stories about bears sailing boats in a regatta, which were unbearably bad, and a few other similar things that will stay moored to my hard drive forever.

Bringing a writer into the world? That’s a fear parents don’t have, but they should. That their children will someday grow up to be writers who love their parents so much they want to immortalize them forever in print (yeah, that’s the angle!), or love writing and being published so much they don’t really care how Mom or Dad feel about it (um, that’s probably closer to the truth).

On that note, here’s this week’s publications: Check out Skirt! magazine, the new essays section. Mine is called Coming Out of the Craft Closet. Also, The Hole Story is out in this month’s issue of Texas Co-op Power, just open the .pdf file to page 25.

Who knew my life was this interesting? Now off to do laundry. (Okay, I’m probably just going to read the Al Capone Does My Shirts book, but it’s laundry-related, right?)