Nikki Loftin

Archive for January 20th, 2010

Questions Writers Get

So, when is your book going to be published? That’s the one, right? That annoying one that unpublished writers get all the time. (Especially, as it turns out, unpublished agented writers. Who’d a thunk it?) My stock answer is both philosophical and Southern: How long is a piece of string?

But recently, someone very near and dear asked me a different question: Why did you choose to write Middle Grade?

My first impulse was to defend Middle Grade literature itself, followed swiftly by a less defensive, but even more woo-woo explanation: I didn’t choose it, it choose me. I ended up explaining how I quit my day job to write romances, but found myself sitting down every day with a head full of stories for Middle Grade kids, and that’s what came out (in fits and starts, accompanied by scads of essays and some truly horrible poetry).

But that question got me wondering — why do you, Writer Friends, write what you write? Whether you write angsty YA novels in verse, or Sci Fi tomes, or naughty limericks (Side note: I memorized all the words to “There once was a man from Nantucket” this week. ‘Cause a girl needs to have a few masterworks of the poetic canon at hand when she gets snarky questions about what kind of poety she writes.), there must be some reason that you feel drawn to that subject matter.

Anyone feel compelled to share? I’ll hum Kum Ba Yah over in my corner of the Internet while you comment if you like.

I remember sitting in workshop after workshop in grad school, listening to people tear apart my writing, wondering why I didn’t care all that much. (Okay, sometimes I cared.) I felt just that divorced from the text — from my own work. I had to write fiction, of a certain length and style — it was in the course description. Literary, no bones about it. And it wasn’t what I felt drawn to write. But at the time, I didn’t feel drawn to much of anything. I remember admitting to my mentor that I felt like I hadn’t lived long enough to write the stories I had to tell.

Can you believe I was that wise at twenty?

So, why did I choose Middle Grade? Because I’ve finally lived long enough to write it. I have two kids of my own who provide me with endless material, and a couple of decades of working with children of all ages. For what it’s worth, I think writing Middle Grade is at least as hard as writing literary fiction, maybe harder. But it’s the type of story I have to tell right now, so I work at it, every day.

But also, truthfully? I didn’t choose it, it chose me.

Pablo Neruda said it about poetry, and said it best, but it’s the same for anyone who has found her genre, I think.

Happy Writing, Friends.