I have been using this phrase for a long time to describe how I have to feel when I have to delete entire chapters or whole entire books to start over again for what the story needs. I did not come up with this phrase. I have been using it for years and years. It's brutal and effective. And I know it works. You have to do what is right for the story. Sometimes you write something great, really really great. You create a fully fleshed character, you craft a beautiful scene, you have a wonderful turn of phrase. And then, in the end, you realize that those things were not meant to be there.
Kill your darlings.
And I know this is how it is. Sometimes something isn't meant for this novel, this work. And there's nothing wrong with that. You cut it, you save it somewhere in your computer, on the cloud, written in a notebook, where you keep all your ideas and things that might work but don't for this. And sometimes those things come home to where they are supposed to belong. Sometimes they don't. But you do it anyway.
Kill your darlings.
This time I am struggling with it. Maybe it's because a lot of this particular novel is about things that happened to me when I was growing up. Based on my story but not my story. But since it came from something that happened to me in the past, and some of it is really good and I worked really hard to craft these scenes and build the conflict and the characters, I am having a hard time letting go of the writing I have done on it over the last nearly two years.
Some of the sections I am cutting are going to be repurposed into flashbacks elsewhere in the novel. But the time I took to write these initial pages, the research I had to perform to make sure I got the timeframe just right, I am having a hard time letting that go.
I'll be able to let it go. But I'm going to need some extra time for this one.
And sometimes the Central Authority will try to get one over me.
You are clearly not good at writing. You should just quit. You worked on this novel for nearly two years and now you are going to throw away half the pages. That is not something a good writer does.
It all sounds so mean, doesn't it? Would I let someone talk to someone I love like that? Would I allow someone to treat my husband, my kids, my friends like that? The answer is obviously a resounding no.
So why do I let myself talk to me like that?
And sometimes, I get down on myself and believe the Central Authority. Because it's voice is loud, and it stands tall over me, with fists like bloody hearts, and like it's going to take some of my blood too by pummeling me if I don't just listen and stop.
Eventually I am going to stop listening to the Central Authority on this topic, for this work. I need to let it sit, and sort out how things are supposed to go together. And eventually I will be able to stand over the Central Authority and smugly smile because I made it through.
I'll kill my darlings, and live to see another day.
And you can too.
