Nikki Loftin

Archive for June, 2010

I Smell A Unicorn

So, you write the next Great American Children’s Novel. You’re so proud of it, you can’t wait to show it to everyone – your family, friends, agent, check-out guy at the grocery. Just one more quick read, you think, and it will be ready to start winning Newbery prizes and making you J. K. Rolling-in-Dough. Just one more quick read… wait! What’s that? Why is there a funny smell coming from Chapter Three? What the heck? There it is – the tell-tale stain of a fairy tale creature who’s been clumsily foreshadowed all over your manuscript. That’s going to take hours to clean up! Who let that thing in here? The author, you say? It’s a magical world, sure, but a strictly defined one, where the magic is limited so the rest of the world seems normal, which makes it all plausible, and creepy, and… oh, no. I think I saw a unicorn behind the next page.  A freakin’ unicorn.

Crap. Get the delete key out, boys. We’re going to be revising for a while longer.

Once more, Writer Friends, into the breach. Hold my trembling, unicorn-free hand? I have to go grind some very small, child-sized bones to make my bread.

*sniffle*

NB: Thank you to Sam, who when I was angsting about how I was writing “too dark” for children, reminded me of the Hunger Games.

What Do I Want? More Yummy Demons

I am hip-deep in revisions on the current WIP, thanks to my amazing Beta Reader Lori (who shall heretofore be called The Ultimate Authority, To Be Obeyed At All Costs), and spending the rest of my time volunteering at Cub Scout Camp*with Cama Rama Ding Dong and The Drewber. (Okay, they ticked me off, so I get to spread their pet nicknames online. Petty, I know. But I do feel better now.)

The problem with being so busy, and knowing I need to crank out an awesome manuscript SOON, is that I can’t start reading a new book. If I do, The Novel Progress Express will jump the tracks and land on a beach with a ten-foot-tall TBR stack and a bunch of mojitos. So, instead, I’ve been allowing myself tasty little bite-size fictional treats.

You have to try this one! My agent-sister, Lisa DesRochers, has a book coming out in September, and sh’es posting sneak peek chapters on Tuesdays. Perfect! Check these chapters out for Knowledge On How To Write YA Openings With Mucho Sexual Tension. (Make sure you go back to June 15 for chapter one.)

Glad I don’t write YA; I would probably get depressed. As it is, I’m loving her yummy MC. Mmmmmmm.

*Camp Hell-On-Earth, populated by screaming fifth graders who think squirting me in the butt with a water pistol is nifty. I don’t even mind, because the temperature has been approximately 97 bazillion degrees in our all-outdoor-mostly-unshaded camp site. Ugh. So why am I still having fun doing it? Masochism?

No Room for My Books

The day has come at last. I have no more room for books in my house, and must therefore permanently suspend the acquisition of any and all new titles.

Bwa ha ha ha ha haahahahaha!!!

Yeah, like that’s going to happen. What’s really happening is that I’m planning to reward the completion and first revision of my WIP by buying a bookshelf or two to house all those gorgeous, colorful, fresh-paged lovelies that keep falling into my arms. (It was the latest poetry book that arrived today in the mail – thank you, book fairy! – that made up my mind.)

So, any suggestions? I’m thinking Ikea. I’m also dreaming about shelves like this.

Mmmm. It makes me feel dirty just looking at all those hardbacks.

Quote for the day: “A room without books is like a body without a soul.” -  Marcus Tullius Cicero

Write well, friends!

Truth with a Capital T

I’m back from Disney World, ready to… well, nap, actually. Have you ever gone to Disney with your kids? It’s exhausting. But don’t worry. After a few more days of sleep, and some therapy sessions to remove the soundtrack to It’s A Small World that’s stuck in my brain like a Wrath of Khan maggot, I’ll be back to writing.

That is, if reading books like my friend Bethany Hegedus’ Truth with a Capital T doesn’t make me give it up entirely.

I took three books on the plane for altitude reading. A couple of cruddy romance/mysteries, and one precious, loaned ARC of Bethany’s.

It’s a good thing I like her so darn much, so I can be happy for her rather than just pea-green envious of her skillz. I spent most of the time in the air being pulled straight through this middle-grade novel about a girl named Maebelle working to uncover a family mystery, make friends in her grandparent’s new town, and find a way to feel special in a family chock-full of talent. It was touching, fun, funny, and loaded with those little pieces of small-town Southern life that made it perfectly real.

What amazed me most is Bethany’s fearlessness – she throws her characters into thorny situations, tackling topics like mixed-race families and the different responses those kids face in the North and South, and pulls it all off. She’s written one of those wonders: a book that would be good for kids to read, that they would WANT to read. Not an easy task.

Now, if I can stop all the fan-girl gushing, I have a book of my own to finish. And a local SCBWI meeting to attend in the morning! Fun:)

Poetry and Pole-dancing

Let’s just get this out of the way: I won a poetry contest – with prizes! being sent to me! yay! -  this week. The spring poetry contest, to be specific, over on Absolute Write, the best place on the web for both disgruntled and gruntled writers to hang, chill, vent, and post their work. (I first saw Kody Keplinger‘s query and pages for The DUFF there – blew me away, even back then. And now look at her! A star on the rise.)

And then today, I taught my booty-shaking Zumba class, and went to have coffee with my writer friend Bethany Hegedus who has a new book coming out, and because she is so awesome and generous, loaned me one of her precious few ARCs to read. The book? Truth with a Capital T. It’s amazing so far. I’ll post more later.

At coffee/lunch, I mentioned I’d been writing and submitting my poetry (along with all that other stuff I write) and Bethany admitted that she writes poetry, but she never sends it out.

As it turns out, I have a LOT of Writer Friends who are the same! Fearless in their writing, and in their subbing of fiction and non-fiction, but hiding Dickinsonian trunks of unseen verse in virtual trunks at the feet of their e-beds. Like they’re ashamed of it. Or like it’s too private to show to anyone. Too personal, maybe,  to expose to the gimlet eyes of editors? Or even the loving, generous eyes of Writer Friends?

I understand this. Years ago, I hid all my poetry. (Um, this was actually a wise move. It was very angsty, and passionate, and terribly, terribly bad.) What happened? When did I decide to trot my poetry out onto the stage, dress it up in spangles and paste, and see how many dollar bills the guys and gals in the Editor’s Airport Lounge would stuff into my verbal G-string?

Does it cheapen my poetry to sign it up for all those Wet T-shirt Contests with prizes of a few dollars and the possibility of long-lasting humiliation and a Poets Gone Wild video that will haunt me – oh, wait, poems aren’t videotaped. Whew! Still, you get my drift.

Or, in that questionable argument the  post-feminist feminists constructed, where literal pole-dancing was re-visioned as a way to take back one’s own sexual/physical power, does my willingness to show it all strengthen me – and my work – somehow?

Okay, okay, I’m laughing my butt off as I type this. Taking it all too seriously, I know, and stretching the metaphor for giggles. Still… I am almost certain, from what I know of Bethany’s and my other poetry-hiding Writer Friends, that their verse would kick my verse’s feeble butt, if they decided to bring it out. And that would be a good thing. The world needs more poems. Hot, sexy tightly-written poems… and also slightly overweight poems, with stretchmarks, freckles, and wrinkles on their butts.

So… you show me yours, and I’ll show you mine.

My poems, that is. Nobody sees the butt wrinkles.

Other News: Off to Disney in two days! So, no blog posts for a bit. Nice addition to the vacation is that I get to meet up with Writer Friends who inhabit Orlando: Lisa Iriarte and Larissa Hardesty. Cool.