Kill Your Darlings

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.

Rough Week

 This past February, I took some days off from being a mom, my job, everything, and drove to the Quad Cities where I holed up in an AirBnB for four days and did nothing but write. I let three people know I was in town, and I saw those three people, but during the day I wrote. And wrote. And wrote.

I dissected Summer of '89, created a new list of things to work on, questions to answer, plot knots to untangle. I even created a color coded chart to track my issues (that was really for my ADHD, it doesn't really serve any other purpose than to let me color while I am working). It was a good experience. I wrote on my time, I watched basketball while doing this, and I went to see friends when I wanted to. It was glorious.

Fast forward to this past week, which has been less than glorious. I dropped Tabi off at Girl Scout camp, and drove to my AirBnB and checked in and promptly dropped into bed, exhausted. I spent the next two days attempting something that looked like writing. I did some fiddly planning and timeline work. I planned the religious lessons the campers in my novel will learn from. But I avoided the big things. I felt terrible and ended up at urgent care for no reason in the end other than I was on vacation and just didn't feel good so I wanted to make sure to nip anything in the bud that was going to be a bigger problem if I wanted until I got home.

The next day, I sat down and started working on the hard stuff. Trying to make the plot make more sense. See what is going on with the characters that I can make work better.

To put it bluntly, this writing retreat really really sucked. I was a nervous anxious mess the entire time. 

And  The Central Authority was just having a great time this week, and for some reason, I just let them have at it. I felt like shit, to put it bluntly. The Central Authority was kind enough to remind me that I am 51 years old, and I have gotten nowhere with my writing since I left college in 2005. It reminded me when I saw who the writer was that got a residency I applied for recently that I didn't get, that I won't ever get a residency until I get something published. And that won't happen until you finish a novel. And please, don't forget about making a social media presence and doing ALL THE SOCIAL MEDIA THINGS that will help grow an audience. Again, without a book to promote. Even when I remember that Social Media is a facade, and a lot of the writers who are out there have to have help in some form, whether it's someone taking care of the kids, that writer not having a job, etc., to keep them going in the background while they present this perfect writing visual in the foreground. I know a lot of writers who have busted their asses to get where they are, and it was a lot of work. But comparison really is the thief of joy, and The Central Authority really likes to steal your sunshine.

So what am I going to do with this week that The Central Authority insists that I have wasted? I am going to realize that the last year has been incredibly hard, there's been a lot of hits from the universe that have worked really hard with The Central Authority to make things even harder. I am going to realize that extra sleep and watching time shifted basketball games might be what I needed. 

I am going to pick up Tabi from Girl Scout camp in a few hours, and I know that they had the best time from the pictures. Her dad talked to them on Wednesday and she said that she was hanging out with a friend and having a great time. She got to spend time away from her family, which I know was seriously stressing her out.

We are going to check into an AirBnb after I pick them up from camp, and we have some plans for this weekend, seeing friends and family, going to a Summerween event put on by my friend, Minda, and seeing Hadestown on Monday afternoon before coming home. All while staying at a sweet place right across the street from the Mississippi River. I am hoping that she and I can have a nice time together before we have to return to real life, and slide into our first year of junior high.

I do have some things I am working on that are upcoming, so I look forward to talking about those things when I can.

Until then, I am going to attempt to keep The Central Authority busy with anything else, and just breathe. Because sometimes what your work needs the most is just breathing.

The Central Authority

While I was working on my writing samples for a recent submission, I found myself wrestling with a particular sample. It came from the middle of a novel I am working on, and there were a lot of things that happened in the novel to get to where the sample began. I was conflicted on how to make this particularly fantastic section of writing make sense to anyone who might read it outside the context of the novel.

That's what I needed, I thought. Context. Put a little paragraph at the beginning to just set the stage for the writing sample.

The Central Authority, however, had other ideas. It wasn't surprising. The Central Authority always had other ideas, along with insults and put downs.

What I call the Central Authority some people call their inner critic, the inner judge. Certainly not the thing I call my conscious, because that at least seems neutral. No, the Central Authority thinks it runs the place, feeding my self-doubt, making me feel, for lack of a better term, like absolute shit and that I can't do anything right and why should I bother?

So the Central Authority thought that putting a context paragraph was a dumb idea. It insisted that I needed to shoehorn into the sample the information that would make the sample make sense, even though I felt that that would slow down the sample and take away from the sparkle that made it a great writing sample for a submission. But as usual, I listened to the Central Authority and spent two more whole days as I was running out of time for the submission window, to attempt to do what it wanted. When I was reaching critical mass.Against my better judgement.

When I was in college, and finals would roll around, I'd grind hard to get the best grade I could (nothing less than 100% would satisfy the Central Authority). I would study, long and hard, writing, copying, until I hit a wall. My brain was full, I was tired, and I knew if I didn't know what I needed to know by that very moment, I wasn't going to know it.

The Central Authority, however, would go into straight panic mode, stirring up my anxiety, requesting more caffeine and sugar, and demanding I go until the very last minute, cramming my tired brain full.

And that's where I was with the sample, but I knew that if I continued trying to do what the Central Authority said, I might just ruin it.

Those two days trying to do the Central Authority's bidding was painful as it goaded me on. You can't be done. It's not good enough. You're not good enough. You need to keep going until it's perfect.

This is what it felt like:


Can't Help Myself


Somewhere in the comments, it said that it took this machine three days of running 24/7 to break down, cleaning up its own 'blood' while bleeding out.

That's how the Central Authority works for me.

At the end of the second day, I was panicking, running out of time, feeling absolutely terrible about myself and writing and like I should probably just quit writing, because I couldn't get this one simple sample done. Those pages on their own were just fine, but no, the Central Authority had to be right. I must be doing something wrong.

I messaged my bestie, V, and this was our exchange:



And then I discovered the first rule of Be Autotelic. I was grossed out by the word 'rule'. The word 'rule' feels very contrary to creating for the sake of being creative. So I am going to call it a Gut Instinct.

Gut Instinct #1:

Trust your voice.

When I say voice, I mean writing voice. Totally different from the Central Authority. The writing voice is sometimes quiet and soothing, sometimes shouting and raucous, doing cartwheels as you try to get down what it is saying is part of the story before doing flips into the next section.

Trust what your voice is telling you to do, even if it breaks the rules. I know I just said rules are contrary to Being Autotelic, and they are, but when it comes to writing, you do need to learn some rules. Like how stories are structured and characters are created. Then after you learn the rules, you can break them. Evaporate them. Trust your voice.

Someone out there wants your writing. Someone out there is waiting for your writing. Maybe your writing is exactly what will make them feel seen, like there's someone else out there exactly like them, and for the first time, maybe they will see they aren't alone. And there is so much power in that.



But in order to do that, you have to break the rules you've learned, defy the Central Authority, and just create.