The Writing Barn is so excited to welcome author Nikki Loftin as the visiting guest, alongside author Joy Preble, for April’s Words and Wine Wednesday! Nikki’s latest release, Wish Girl, has been met with high praise, and was recently discussed in The New York Times’ Sunday Book Review! Nikki Loftin will be a guest author of The Writing Barn’s newest programming, A Week in Residency With, which takes place November 8-14 and features faculty author Nova Ren Suma! If you’d like to attend April’s FREE Words and Wine Wednesday, please RSVP here! In the meantime, get your Nikki Loftin fix right here with our Austin Author Spotlight Q&A:
Austin Author Spotlight
with Nikki Loftin
Where did your ideas/inspiration come from in writing Wish Girl?
I was born and raised in Texas, and I’ve loved the Hill Country since I was a little girl. The magical valley in Wish Girl is based on a real valley
where I spent my summers as a child, running wild and exploring. It was my favorite place to be, and probably why I moved back out to the country as fast as I could after I graduated from college! My inspiration for writing is right outside my window these days.
What is your writing process or routine you’ve found to be most productive for yourself?
I am a list maker, and when I am drafting a new book, I tend to make very detailed lists of how many words I plan to write, broken up by breaks for tea, lunch, or exercise. If I break up my daily word count (say, 3,000 words) into more manageable chunks of 500 words at a time, I am much more successful.
This sort of sucks all the romance out of it, right? Good. Real writing is a lot less black turtlenecks and soul-searching, and a lot more “making of the word-sausage.”
Do you have any advice for budding authors?
Take your work very seriously, and prioritize it over television or housework or even hanging out with friends. To break into traditional publishing, you have to be able to write very well, and that only happens with lots and lots of practice. So write, above all else, write.
And when you’re not writing? Read.
When you worked on your novel here at The Writing Barn, did you have any AHA! moments in your work? If so, what do you think inspired them (peer, lecturer, roaming deer, etc.)?
When I brought Wish Girl to the workshop at The Writing Barn, it was fairly polished. I was looking for some feedback on a revision I had done for my agent, not planning to make huge changes. (My editor had already approved the outline, so I didn’t have a lot of leeway in that regard anyway.) I got some great feedback on lines and characterization. But the Writing Barn is always inspirational to me – the setting and the other writers working there make me take my work more seriously, and I think the work I’ve produced while I’m there shows it!
What do you think of the literary community in Austin?
I think I wouldn’t be a published author without it! Honestly, the local literary community is where I go for critique, advice, consolation or celebration, and to learn about craft and behind-the-scenes publishing. It’s an amazing group we have here – so open and generous and ready to help. I hope to be able to pay back the incredible support I’ve received from my writer friends, although it’ll be hard. The established writers here have done so much for me, and still do.
Nikki Loftin is the author of two middle grade novels, both published by Razorbill/Penguin. THE SINISTER SWEETNESS OF SPLENDID ACADEMY (2012) which Publishers Weekly called “a mesmerizing read,” and Kirkus Reviews called “deliciously scary and satisfying,” was the winner of the 2013 Writer’s League of Texas Book Award and is currently listed for Oklahoma’s 2014 Sequoyah Book Award. Her second novel, NIGHTINGALE’S NEST (2014), received starred reviews from Kirkusand the Bulletin for the Center for Children’s Books, and was singled out by theChildren’s Literacy Foundation as the middle grade “Next Great Book” of 2014. Nightingale’s Nest will also be published in Portuguese by Editora Bertrand in Brazil.
Nikki’s third book, WISH GIRL, was published in February 2015. Foreign rights have already been sold in Brazil, Italy, and China.