Nikki Loftin

Archive for the ‘People I Love’ Category

Make My Day

It’s not hard to make my day, not really. A friend of mine did it today when she surprised me with the news that one of her students had brought in a copy of the Boy’s Life story I wrote… and that she was using it to teach her language arts lessons! I know, I know, what this really means is that a whole bunch of kids are thinking “Oh, no, don’t make me read that Boy’s Life story again, and pick apart plot elements, etc.” but I still think it’s cool. Usually it takes a Newbery sticker to make sure kids loathe your writing. (*kidding*)

I had a ball in Houston at the conference, enjoying talking with Jennifer M. so much that it almost felt like cheating on Suzie. I ended up spending some time as a timer for their agent conferences, and met a whole bunch of really cool writers, including Pamela Hutchins. She’ll have an agent very, very soon, I’m sure – I’ve read some of her award-winning chapters, and she’s got mad skillz.

Breaking News: My writer friend and critique partner Sheryl Witschorke just signed with Robert Guinsler. This makes two of my Writer Friends to gain representation immediately after I critique their manuscripts! Could there be a connection? Could I make money off this somehow? LOL Sheryl also gives very good crit, so I’m hoping she doesn’t get too famous too quickly and stop critiquing for me.

I’ve been doing some interesting things with my time as of late, including writing some greeting card poems that have been accepted for “further review.” Quite a few cards, actually, and that’s all I can say now. More on that later… much later, probably.

Now, it’s back to write Holy Toast, and ignore the Shiny New Idea that swooped in last week – a slightly paranormal, funny ADULT romance novel. *gulp* I promise, I only wrote 1500 words. I’m stopping now, honest.

Until November, that is. Bwa ha ha ha ha !

Oh, check out my friends Shelli’s Quick and Dirty blog post this week. She goes to some great conferences, doesn’t she? And shares all her info. Love her!

Write well, Friends, and write quickly — the Holidays approacheth!

Making Literary Sausage

That’s what I’m doing this week – the first, rough, rushing-hectic-and-headlong through this WIP that has me by the throat and won’t let go until I finish. It’s ugly, it’s messy, and I don’t want to think too hard about what’s going into this draft (hence the sausage metaphor, thank you very much) and when I get done it will still be raw, unready, but it will be something.

Hmm. I’ll avoid sausage posts in the future. This one’s making me reconsider my lapsed vegetarianism. (You know, my dad used to make sausage on our kitchen counter when I was a kid, out of the deermeat he butchered on my swingset during deer season. Yes, and people still had to ASK why I was a vegetarian all those years. Brrrr.)

I love this part of writing, but I love all the other parts, too. The editing, the revising, the reading it aloud, the thinking, the long walks out here in the country when I get blocked and how those two miles can free my mind to secretly, subversively consider ways around plot trickery that I wouldn’t dream up this close to a keyboard.

It consumes me, this work.

All this to say, there have been many other blog posts in the past week that I wish I had written, posts I could have written if my manuscript would have given me time (it’s calling even now, I must post links quickly!). For instance, this excellent post about the San Antonio SCBWI conference by Vonna Carter (bonus: a picture of me and Shelli! Thanks, Vonna.). These posts on the Speak Loudly discussion about Laurie Halse Anderson’s excellent book and others – thanks, Shelli, Suzie, and so many others for speaking eloquently to this topic.

I have been reading, too. I finished The Duff – amazing, uncomfortable to read at times, breakneck pacing once I learned to live with my queasiness about Bianca’s, um, choices. Highly recommended for older teens. Also, Mockingjay a few weeks too late to squeee about it, but I loved it as well. I’m reading even more fairy tale/mythology stuff – including The Girl Who Married the Moon, and hundreds of traditional fairy tales, looking for that sliver I can pick out and turn into my next creative theme-tool. So many more – Dancing With Dead People, a memoir that so far reminds me of The Glass Castle, and Crank are next on the stack.

Now back to the writing. I cannot escape the WIP – this one’s funny, and poignant (to me at least) and deep, and maybe even controversial. What am I thinking? All this in middle grade? Maybe it’s for older middle grade. It’s got all sorts of Topics of Importance buried in there… and this sweet, real relationship between two brothers that reminds me so much of the way my older sister and I helped each other through The Divorce.

No one has a better job than this.

Writer Friends? Write well, write quickly.

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*

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.

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.

Embarrassing Yourself (And Your Kids)

Happy Monday! It’s Overshare Day on Nikki’s Blog, so settle back in your comfy chairs and get ready to learn things you never wanted to know about me. Don’t worry, I have an actual reason for the information. Not a great reason, but a reason. So here goes.

One of the joys in my sad, pathetic housewife life is embarrassing my children. I do it as regularly and publicly as I can. (Just yesterday, I sang and danced Lady Gaga’s song Telephone (while on Grandma’s boat on Lake Austin – sound travels better over water) to my two boys and their 10 year-old cousin Josh. They all hid under beach towels, but that did not deter me. No! I made it all the way through to the Beyonce part of the video. Now that’s dedication.) I was deemed the most embarrassing mom in the  universe. Score!

I also do embarrassing things at home, too. And you know what? The boys don’t mind that so much, as long as no one else can hear me. Like, for two or three months last year, as soon as the kids arrived home from school, I got out my guitar and played a made-up song about farting called Bust a Grumpy while the boys danced on the bed.* The refrain was plebeian but, Oh, the verses! Full of all sorts of details describing flatulence. (I am, you know, a published poet. You got mad word skillz, ya use ‘em. LOL)

I digress.Where was I going with this? Oh, yes. Willing to embarass yourself… and those you love. As a writer, you gotta do it. Come on, it takes a pretty thick ego to call yourself a writer, and a thicker one to write a novel that you send out into the cold, hard world. It’s even harder to do something novel with your novel, or whatever you’re writing. To take a risk, to do something not quite like what everyone else is doing? Terrifying. Potentially excruciatingly embarrassing. Build up that ego; you’re going to need it.

There are going to be plenty of people who will tell you that your novel in verse/picture book in emails/YA paranormal romance about sentient cheeses is the worst idea they’ve ever heard. (Hopefully not your beta readers.) But write it anyway. Will it get published? Probably not. Most things don’t. But will you experience an almost transcendent joy in the creation of that thing that your uncool heart/imagination/Dork-Muse called forth into being? Yes, you will. And that’s the real payoff.

When I daydream, I hear children laughing. Sometimes it’s my real kids laughing about the bedtime story I made up for them that night. (Talk about payoff. All my bedtime stories hit the bestseller lists.

Someday I hope it will be the children reading my work. It could be that they’ll laugh at me, instead of with me. So what? I stopped trying to be cool long ago, and I never was very good at it anyway. What I want to be good at is telling my stories in a new way. Even if that means making myself look like an idiot. Even if it means mortifying all those associated with me.

It probably will. Hey, I have a whole lot of kids, family members, and beta reader friends to embarrass. I am so blessed.

Do you ever find yourself worried about what others will think of your work? Do you ever censor yourself to avoid embarrassment… or even hide your manuscripts in a drawer/your light under a bushel to avoid being laughed at/rejected? Don’t we all know writers who do that? Let’s not be that kind of writer, Friends.

Write well, and bravely. Have fun with your work!

News: An editor of a literary journal nominated a short story of mine for an award/competition thingy. I’ll give more details later, if anything comes of it. For now, I’m just feeling all warm and fuzzy knowing he thought my little story was good enough to be sent on!

* They made me swear never to tell anyone about this. What can I say? I’m a fiction writer. I lie all the time.

Are We There Yet?

This is the summer of the road trip. Last year, My mom and I took the boyz on a glorious, fun-filled, action-packed 36-hour (thank Heaven for in-car DVD players) road trip up to Ohio to visit my brother and his family. It was fun, even if my mom did insist on taking her two-pound toothless chihuahua (aptly named Booger) and even though I had to drive every single mile of the way in Stepdad’s truck, hauling a caravan. We stopped a lot (the joy of not taking a grown man with you on a road trip is you never have to apologize for needing a pit stop every 75 miles) and had a blast.

Dave got jealous, since he had to stay home and work. To make up for it, this summer, Dave and I are taking the boys on a 10 day fun-filled journey through Fort Davis, Texas, to White Sands, New Mexico, Santa Fe, and back through Carlsbad Caverns. (Also, we’ll hit Taos, and some other places, natch). I can’t wait. And no, I’m not kidding. Some of my most amazing memories are from the road trips my parents took with me and the sibs when we were little. Of course, for them, that was the only vacation option, since money was an issue. We roughed it. (New topic beginning next week: Why I Hate Camping, the First Installment in a Fifty-Part Series.) Dave and I will be staying in hotels every night. Ah, showers and beds. Bliss.

Anyway, I was thinking about road trips and writing novels, and how they’re pretty similar for me. I mean, when I let myself, I enjoy the writing process – even the tricky parts – as much or more than getting to the end. You know, that “Eureka!” feeling? When I realize that where your subconscious (ah, clever, precious subconscious Nikki, how I love you) has taken the plot, is so much cooler than where you might have steered it? It’s the same feeling you get when you look out the window and see a triple rainbow arching over the flat West Texas plains. Holy cow! What a surprise. What a blessing.

And, of course, there are all those moments when you’re slogging along – driving through the metaphorical rain of the manuscript – when all you can think is “Are we there yet?” Even the flat tires (cardboard characters!), and busted timing belts (pacing issues!) turn into really funny stories, um, ten years later or so. I hope.

All this to say, I think I’m there. I just got Blessing in Disguise back from my last beta reader. (Betas are like triple rainbows, too, infinitely precious. Mwa!) I think it’s time to pack this one up. Just one more read-aloud, a few more miles… tomorrow I have to hop back on the Gingerbread Express, and see if I can finish yet another first draft before June! I hope revising that one is as rewarding as the last one has been.

Any fun vacation plans, Friends? Or even long-winded metaphors about writing and traveling? LOL

Write well!

Turkey Eggs

Okay, this one’s weird. Tonight, my dear friend and neighbor Sue came over to celebrate her birthday (um, by bringing over her birthday presents – chocolate-covered strawberries and muscat – to share. Take note, friends. On your birthday, YOU provide the feast!). She announced that her husband Bob had inadvertently mowed down the tall grass all around a wild turkey’s nest, and that the hen hadn’t come back to her eggs since yesterday.

Most people would say this was too bad, nature in action, yada yada. Me? I said, “Cameron, take this basket, go get those eggs, and stick ‘em under Broody (our broody hen who sits on her butt in the nesting box all day, pecking anyone who reaches in to gather the chicken eggs). We’re going to raise some turkeys.” The boys were thrilled, and I became The Coolest Country Mom ever.

Now, please don’t tell me this is a bad idea. I don’t want to know. I want to see if the eggs will hatch. And then, I want to watch Broody take care of a half dozen gangly turkeys. (We’ve decided to call them The Ugly Turklings if they do hatch.)

I’ll probably be back in a few days with news that the eggs are rotting, but who knows? Maybe I’ll be posting cute pictures like this.

In writing news, I got a check in the mail from an unexpected place. Judson Press, who publishes The Secret Place (a devotional book) has accepted – and sent my check for, hooray! – a tiny piece I sent them over eight months ago. Over Eight Months. People are pregnant for less time. I had completely forgotten about it.

So, the moral is, a la Galaxyquest –  “Never give up! Never surrender!”

Also, my beta readers are getting back to me with comments on Blessing. I am thrilled. The comments so far are helpful, and doable. I feel very hopeful I can get Blessing back to Agent Suzie by the end of the month! I have to admit, the comments of one reviewer had *me* in tears. This is how I felt.

Write well, Writer Friends! And hatch lots of lovely, fluffy plots.

Mother’s Day Essays

This month, two of my essays came out in the local parenting magazine, ParentWise:Austin. I wrote one about my mother-in-law Liz, who passed away over six years ago (leaving an enormous hole in my life) and one about my own mother, who is still around and just LOVES it when I tell funny stories about her in such a public way.

Yeah, right. Sure.

Seriously, people. Be careful when and if you have kids. You never know if one of them might turn out to be a writer, and then you’ll be in trouble. If my kids ever grow up and decide to rat out my poor parenting skills in print, they’ll have material for decades. Here’s a couple of quotes from me just this week. “Two words, kid: Foster Care.” and “I have a knife, and if you touch me one more time, I swear I will cut off your little finger.”

Yeah, I’m really not gunning for mom of the year. I’m actually a lot better off than I was a few years back, when I used to dream about calling anonymous false abuse reports in to CPS so I could get a weekend away.*

In unrelated news, I sent my Blessing in Disguise manuscript to a new set of Betas yesterday (yay) and Raymond Mahaney’s Wrong Moves went out on sub on Monday (super yay!) sent by L’Agent Extraordinaire, Miss Suzie. I have a personal goal of finishing the Gingerbread WIP by June 1, which would be a bit tricky, since that means writing, like, 8,000 words a week! But it might happen. We’ll see.

Whoever you are, have a good weekend. Write well, and if you have a mother you love, who still speaks to you even after you’ve sold the stories of all the embarrassing things she did when you were a child, and who has an excellent sense of humor about it all, congratulations. Tell her you love her so much you can’t help but write about her, and buy her a margarita with your ill-gotten gains. That’s the plan chez moi, anyway. Happy Mother’s Day, Mom!

*This is the part where I say I’m kidding, so no one actually does call CPS on me. Seriously, it was years ago. And I only thought it, like, a few dozen times. Wait! I mean, never. Just a joke. Move along, move along, nothing to see here.

May Day Bouquet

When I was a little girl, on the first day of May every year, I would gather wildflowers from the sides of the drainage ditch next to my house, wrap the stems in a bunch of wet paper towels and some tinfoil, and sneak across the street to Catherine and Leon’s house. I would put the flowers down on the elderly couple’s doormat, ring the bell, and run away as fast as I could.

Every year. I never forgot.

I can’t remember where I got the idea. My mom? My sister? Someone, somewhere, told me that was what you did on the first day of May, to celebrate spring. A gift and a practical joke all rolled up in one. What kid could resist?

Some years there were better flowers – years like this one’s been, when the winter was rainy as all get out, and the bluebonnets and daisies answered the call to show off. Some years, it was a straggly handful of henbit, purple verbena, and some rain lilies that wilted almost before the door opened.  It didn’t matter. Every year, hiding in the bushes, I would hear the door open, and Catherine would cry out. “Why, Leon! Come and see! Someone’s left flowers here! I wonder who it could have been?”

I loved those neighbors. Their door and refrigerator was always open to a latchkey kid who had dropped her key somewhere (again), and their candy dish was always full of those peculiar delights: Atkinson’s peanut butter bars. To this day, all I have to do is smell one of those candies, and I am six years old again, my teeth stuck together, listening to Leon playing in the living room with his local wash tub band.

Catherine and Leon were old way back then, and they’ve been gone for decades. But I remember them. On top of my computer desk is Catherine’s favorite vase, given to me after her funeral — an elegant, peach-tinted blown-glass cone, filled with dried flowers all year long.

And every year, on May 1, I wonder: Will there be a barefoot, laughing neighbor girl when I’m old, who hides in the bushes and laughs while I open the door and shout for my husband to come and see the bouquet?

Happy Spring, Writer Friends.