Best Writing Advice Ever!: Lani Diane Rich Guest Post

         We're at the halfway point of National Novel Writing Month.  And while some of you are pecking away at your keyboards with aplomb cranking out your latest masterpiece, others may have thrown their hands up in frustration on the verge of ditching the whole process and walking away without winning.  To the latter I say don't give up yet--there is still hope.


          In this post I offer a big dose of inspiration to encourage NaNoers everywhere and any other would be book author that your work is not in vain.  You can do it.  Others have, so why not you?

          The evidence I offer you comes in the persona of one Lani Diane Rich, bestselling author of nine novels, three of those having been the fruit of her labors during NaNoWriMo.   Lani holds the distinction of being the first unpublished author to have a Nano novel become published.  Her romantic comedy novel Time Off for Good Behavior written as her 2003 NaNo entry landed her an agent and a two book contract with Warner Books.   Not too shoddy of an effort I'd say.


        In her guest spot in this edition of Tossing It Out Lani offers some advice that might help you proceed in your writing with a bit less trepidation.

 Sunflower Seeds

        There's a scene in a fifth season episode of The X-Files called "Bad Blood." It's about Mulder and Scully tracking down a vampire, and my all-time favorite X-Files for many reasons, but there's one thing that I've taken from this particular story that has helped me through the years while writing Nano.

        Sunflower seeds.

        During one scene, Mulder gets drugged by the vampire, who can't physically overpower people, so he drugs them and drinks their blood while they're out cold. As Mulder is fighting the effects of the drug, he uses his knowledge of vampires—that they're horribly OCD and can't leave a mess behind—to distract the vampire and buy time. So he throws a package of sunflower seeds, spreading them all over the floor, and the vampire stops hissing, gives Mulder an annoyed look with his green glowy eyes, and says, "Aw. What'd you do that for?"

        And then, the vampire proceeds to pick up the seeds. It's this delay that saves Mulder's life, giving Scully enough time to crash through the door and chase the vampire off.

        What does this have to do with Nano? Everything. See, you've got an internal editor inside you who nitpicks at everything. Adverb! Lazy writing! Bad dialogue! Every thirty seconds, she's bugging you about one thing or another, and making it impossible for you to connect with your story, because you have to stop and make everything perfect first. In so doing, she drains you of your energy, focus, and enthusiasm. And for what? Nothing. She wants perfection from you, right out of the gate, and the problem with that is, there's no way to make it perfect. You must draft a load of crap, and then go back and fix it. As Nora Roberts has famously stated, you can fix crap, but a blank page is never anything other than a blank page.

       So, how do you get your internal editor to shut up? You inundate her with crap. She says, "Oooh! Weak sentence structure!" and you keep going while she stares at it, dumbfounded. Sunflower seed. Then, you use an adverb in dialogue attribution, and she gasps in horror... and you leave it behind as you race forward. Sunflower seed. Eventually, she's buried under a pile of sunflower seeds, silent, and you are writing, you are drafting, you are creating.

      You win.

      And yes, sure, some of it will be bad, and some of it you will have to go back and fix or delete entirely later, but the most amazing thing is that some of it—hell, in my experience, most of it—will be good. Really good. Great stuff you never would have written if you hadn't buried that internal editor under a pile of sunflower seeds.

      So that's my advice to you: Write crap. Write it abundantly and with glee in your heart. Then go back and fix it later. And tell that internal editor she has the damn month off.

      Until you get to revision. :)

Lani Diane Rich is a NYT and USA Today bestselling author of nine novels. She teaches writing classes at Storywonk.com, and hosts the free daily writing podcast, StoryWonk Daily, with her husband, Alastair Stephens. She is currently writing magical romantic comedy for St. Martin's Press as Lucy March, and her first title, A Little Night Magic, is coming out on January 31st, 2012.










        Thank you Lani for your very creative approach to squelching our internal editors.  Now readers give us your thoughts on the topic.   Any comments or questions for Lani?






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