Nikki Loftin

Archive for August, 2010

Festival Season Begins!

I’ve lived my whole life within thirty miles of Austin, Texas. My French teacher in high school used to mourn that I’d become one of those insular hick housewives, popping out a half-dozen kids before I turned thirty in a trailer park on the outskirts of town. I’d like to think she wouldn’t be dismayed at the direction my life took ( although she’d probably smack me for turning down that acceptance to UT Law school. Hey, I never wanted to make any money to begin with) but you never know what success means to different people.

Anyway, I love living in Austin, even more since I threw myself into the writing scene. Where else can you casually meet these kinds of authors at a local high school? (I’m totes taking my 15 y.o. niece, who thinks I am some sort of superhero for securing her face time with her idols.) Of course, I won’t bother taking her to the Big Mama of all Festivals, The Texas Book Festival. That’s where I get my fangirl on, with hundreds of the most spectacular authors in the Universe showing up to do small-group panels, talks, signings, etc. If you hang out in the Congressional cafeteria long enough, you can even Watch Famous Authors Order Cheeseburgers.

The coolest part about these festivals? They are FREE. All you have to do is clear your weekend out, and it’s like going to one of the best writing workshops in the country, except this one takes place in a city with good weather, excellent Mexican food, and only a very few trailer parks on the outskirts.

And, no, I do not live in one of those… yet. So, Writer Friends. If any of you can wing your way down here to Austin, and need a non-trailerish launch pad for your Festival Fun… send me a quick note! The guest bedroom is as cheap as it gets.

Sad News: My 12 y.o. terrier Sugar died unexpectedly on Friday. She was a grumpy little dog, fiercely protective of the kids (she guarded their cribs when they were babies) and prone to express her displeasure with well-placed carpet stains. We all loved her so.

OPP (Other People’s Plots)

I’ve spent a LOT of time recently critiquing my Writer Friends’ Works of Genius, and — while part of me thinks I should have been writing my own next Work of Genius — most of me knows it’s been time well spent. Every time I critique someone else’s manuscript, I get the chance to really read like a writer. When you do that — especially with an unpublished manuscript, that hasn’t been picked apart a billion times by professional editors — you learn something about what works and what doesn’t in your genre.

Recently, I’ve come to realize that I am surrounded by Writer Friends who have amazing Voice. Voice… Glorious Voice! Sure, the plotting and pacing may not be exactly perfect… but the Voice! Ah! Sing to me, my Children of the Night!

Um, back to the point. Lack of Voice has never been my issue. Like most pantsers (I’m a recovering pantser, actually. I’ve started plotting things out, after chucking enough manuscripts into the bin because of poorly-conceived and executed plots.), my issues are motivation… and plot.

So, I read this excellent article recently. I went to quite a few talks (local SCBWI meetings, etc.). And then I realized all those experts might actually know something. (I hate it when that happens.) All of a sudden, I’m not just reading my Writer Friends’ manuscripts with an eye for pacing and plot – I’m reading everything that way. I think — I hope — that by doing this now, in my in-between-new-novel time — I will be able to avoid a lot of the familiar sinkholes where I usually end up wallowing in my early draft days. So, I’ve decided that yes. Even though I hate slowing down to pick apart the books I’m reading, it’s a necessary step to making my work better.

Yes, I am down with OPP.

So, here’s my question:

You down with OPP?

PS – In other news, I’m working on two short fic pieces – one juvenile, one adult — and researching like mad for the new WIP. Once school starts, I’m going to hit the ground running. Woot! Who wants to read my oh-so-well-plotted first draft in November? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller? LOL

Those Three Little Words: Rue The Day

How do I love Thee (my Writer Friends)? Let me count the ways…

“I love thee to the length and breadth… and way past the depth of stupidity of all those critics/agents/editors who do not INSTANTLY see and recognize your BRILLIANCE….” These are words every good Writer Friend should know and say, with some frequency, to her friends who are submitting their work. It’s in the job description!
(You know what I’m talking about. We writers have different “friend jobs,” different kinds of love we must show to our colleagues who are going through the fire with us. Read the manual.)

I hear a lot of talk about the necessity of being honest with one another, cutting through the BS, laying it all out there in critique and making sure our friends’ manuscripts are PERFECT and WORKS OF ART before they send them out to those editors/agents/contests.

Yes, yes, friends. We all must be cruel and honest with one another. But we also must be ready, willing, and able to share these three little words with one another: Rue the day.

As in, “Don’t worry, they’ll get theirs. They will RUE THE DAY they rejected your masterpiece. You’ll be the next Kate di Camillo, the next Jerry Spinelli, the next Nan Marino (did you know I LOVE her? Check out her blog) and then they’ll be DEVASTATED they made such a horrible, career-limiting mistake. *apply chocolate now; lather, rinse, repeat*

Okay, okay. We all know this talk may not be 100% honest. But the sentiment is, or should be. If it’s not appearing for you on your worst days, you need new Writer Friends — the kind who call you out of the blue (the best Writer Friends are slightly psychic) and say those three magic words.
I hope you have that kind of friend – I know I do! And I’ve needed them, even though my path has been way more sunlight than shadows for the last year or two.

If you do have those Friends? Make sure you show them all the love you can – and love them like a Mama Bear, even if their manuscripts seem like the runts of the litter from time to time. Who knows? Those runts sometimes grow up to be Wrinkles in Time.
And then those shortsighted people who rejected them? They will rue the freakin’ day.

End of sermon.

Note: One of my Very Best Writer Friends – Lindsey Scheibe -  who will be famous very soon, and then will blurb my books (also in the Friend contract), just signed with the lovely and insightful Mandy Hubbard of D4EO Literary. Hooray for Lindsey! And congratulations, Mandy. You must have a good picker.;) *throws virtual confetti*

If You Starve a Blog, Does it Die?

The answer, it seems, is no. Or this one would have perished weeks ago.

I didn’t mean to leave my Writer Friends hanging. It’s just that I’ve been busy revising novels, writing short pieces, and living a life.

Yes, one of those. I went on a road trip with the kids, and we had a blast. Was it bad that I kept thinking “I’m getting so much MATERIAL here!”every time we stopped somewhere cool? Come on, the World’s Biggest Pistachio? Enormous cave structures (Speleothems, or somesuch) shaped precisely like giant boobies? (According to my 10 year old son, naturally, who giggled his way through Carlsbad Caverns. You’ve never seen the ninth wonder of the world until you’ve seen it with a little boy who keeps whispering “nipples!’ every few minutes To be fair, I was thinking the same thing.)

We saw petroglyphs – which have already made an appearance in a short fiction piece this week — and sledded down the dunes at White Sands. We took pictures of badger tracks, and kangaroo rat tracks, and all sorts of other tracks in the early morning, and watched an evening storm that rolled in all around us, flooding the mountains, while we stood on the dry, silent dunes. Gorgeous.

My favorite moment was watching the “Dance of the Pour” at the bronze foundry in Shidoni, outside Santa Fe. A giant cauldron of molten metal splahing like lava all around? You know that’s going into something I write… someday.

So, that’s what I did on my summer vacation. Now, I’ll spend a few weeks revising some manuscripts I’ve got ready to polish, and send out a thousand small subs so I can get those little ego boo moments every now and again (to offset any possible rejections) and I’ll try to blog a bit more frequently. But who knows when life will start happening all around me again, and I’ll need to put down the keyboard and go build the moments that actually make books wonderful?

So… what did YOU do on your summer vacation?