Killing darlings
Sep. 16th, 2008 11:20 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pjthompsonRandom quote of the day:
"What I had to face, the very bitter lesson that everyone who wants to write has got to learn, was that a thing may in itself be the finest piece of writing one has ever done, and yet have absolutely no place in the manuscript one hopes to publish."
—Thomas Wolfe on deleting a scene from Of Time and the River he'd worked on for months
Yeah, killing the darlings. I think we all know how that feels. Been there, done that many times. It's so ironic (synchronous?) that this particular quote comes up now. I'm currently trying to figure out a way to cut a scene from A Rain of Angels that really should go, and how to connect the narrative threads back up again. This scene is far from the finest piece of writing I've ever done. In fact, it's just plain silly. Even as I was writing it I knew it should be cut, but I just couldn't help myself. That's always where I get myself in trouble, with the silly scenes, where I cannot suppress my goofy side. I don't seem to have as much problem chucking the serious stuff when it becomes evident it's not working (well, sort of—you know how that goes). But any time my inner nine-year-old says, "Oh, this is going to be so neato kobeato!" my grown up writerly self has trouble saying no. I'm not what you call a stern disciplinarian. Ask Min. She'd laugh at the very concept.
"What I had to face, the very bitter lesson that everyone who wants to write has got to learn, was that a thing may in itself be the finest piece of writing one has ever done, and yet have absolutely no place in the manuscript one hopes to publish."
—Thomas Wolfe on deleting a scene from Of Time and the River he'd worked on for months
Yeah, killing the darlings. I think we all know how that feels. Been there, done that many times. It's so ironic (synchronous?) that this particular quote comes up now. I'm currently trying to figure out a way to cut a scene from A Rain of Angels that really should go, and how to connect the narrative threads back up again. This scene is far from the finest piece of writing I've ever done. In fact, it's just plain silly. Even as I was writing it I knew it should be cut, but I just couldn't help myself. That's always where I get myself in trouble, with the silly scenes, where I cannot suppress my goofy side. I don't seem to have as much problem chucking the serious stuff when it becomes evident it's not working (well, sort of—you know how that goes). But any time my inner nine-year-old says, "Oh, this is going to be so neato kobeato!" my grown up writerly self has trouble saying no. I'm not what you call a stern disciplinarian. Ask Min. She'd laugh at the very concept.
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