Note #1: Preserve Your Darlings

No need for a bloody execution

“Kill your darlings,” goes the old editor’s saying.

The idea is that being unsentimental about your own writing will allow you to do what’s best for the piece. Steel yourself, the timeless wisdom demands, then grasp your pruning hook and slice out phrases and flourishes that may not quite work, stand out unproductively, or ring false on a second read — even though you love them. The original line, coined by Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch during a lecture at Cambridge, is even a touch harsher. “Murder your darlings,” he implored his audience. Perhaps that extra belligerence is necessary because it’s one of the hardest things for any writer to do.

I agree with the principle, but find mercy to be a better course. Instead of simply cutting out my darlings and parting with them forever, I keep a separate document where I paste these condemned sentences and phrases, keeping them alive just in case I can find a use for one down the line. Even if I don’t, it provides some psychological relief. Anytime you create something you like, it has value. And it’s worth saving. If only to remind you when you’re stuck one day that you have it in you to write a memorable sentence. That lost fragment may be the exact salve you needed.

Here are a few of my own marooned creations I’m still fond of.

“I wondered then if there had ever been any real mystery or if all along it was only my mystery, this all just a serpentine record of my own ignorance.”

“Meanwhile, I was losing money on roulette and not telling anyone about it, a caricature of a boozing writer so bent into his story he becomes its reflection.”

“But when you open up your life to someone, nakedly, to a stranger, and reveal the vast book of your experience, you may be surprised to see how certain things don’t add up.”

Hello, old friends.