Nikki Loftin

Archive for December 15th, 2009

Hello, My Name is Nikki and I Write…

Give me a second and I’ll tell you, as soon as I figure it out.

I suppose I spend most of my time writing children’s fiction. So, when people who want the short answer ask what I do, I say that. (Actually, I say Middle-Grade Humor for Boys, although that’s not entirely true. My current WIP has a female protagonist). But I also send off an essay every, well, um, every week or so, to a literary journal/magazine/contest/anthology. Yeah, I know. That’s a lot of essays. And a whole bunch of them have seen print. So I’m an essayist?

Of course, I also have three (count ‘em!) puppet plays coming out in an anthology in January, and four children’s short stories that will go public sometime in 2010. So there’s that children’s fiction thing again… but the one title I never presumed to give myself is the one I’m wrestling with today: poet.

Gulp. That’s a tricky word. First, it sounds really pretentious to use it to describe yourself, and unreal. Like a joke you would write on your application for unemployment. Also, I don’t write THAT kind of poetry. You know, those poems that seem to be everywhere right now, that remind me a tangled balls of yarn made out of words. They’re just a mess, to me. Of course, that could be because I’m too thick to untangle their meanings. Very possible.

Anyway, what I’m trying to say is this: I have had another poem accepted by a literary journal: Front Range. I am delighted, and humbled, and confused. Poets, to me, are rare creatures. Special, in a “not at all like me” sense.

I’m not sure real poets read vampire romances and books of fart jokes and drink strawberry margaritas.

What do you think?