Cut and Run

It has been said many times, many ways: kill your darlings.

These last few months I have been working on a book which had been at first draft. I had written it, let it sit on a shelf for a few weeks, gave it a once over for basic plot points character arcs, and thought, “yeah that isn’t bad.” I knew it needed polish, but I have recently taken to having beta readers and editors have at my first drafts, because I don’t want to polish a pig, I want to polish the swan. (or whatever metaphorical animal you would like to pick.)

I thought the book was pretty good. There might be some paragraphs here and there that needed work but, on the whole, it was solid.

Turns out...

Not so much. The story didn’t just sag in the middle, it flopped over the edge of a cliff and touched the canyon floor. The main story arc was “unable to carry the story,” and left readers bored. They didn’t understand why the main character pursued the goals of the story and so on, and so on.

I have been writing long enough that I knew, I can’t ignore these people. They are trusted readers, and they’re good at delivering me bad news. And it was really bad. I needed to do what I always do. Regroup and think, what now?

When I first started to write I wasn’t particularly attached to the specific story I was writing, I was attached to the act of storytelling. Now that I have been at this a while I am more attached to the specific tale. I want that story to be told, which means, putting it in the trunk and never seeing it again is off the table. I have to rewrite.

Editing is something I struggle with. Not because I don’t like it, I like it fine. Not because I have not done a lot of it, I have. But because, unlike writing, where I have explored the space, and found methods which work for me, I don’t know that I have found the editing modality which works for me yet. Which brings me around to the title.

Kill your darlings.

As I look at the back half of the book, 90 % of which has to go, I read paragraphs and think to myself, “but I like the way that sounds,” or “that is a great phrase and wonderful ah ha moment...” but they have no place in the new story. Tweaked, they lose their meaning, and in place they don’t work in the new story. They have to go. I struggle when I read and reread the pieces which have to go, and I struggle to find a way to keep my darlings alive, but the reality is, they need to go in the trunk. I need to write the back half completely over. It is time lost. Three months of a draft that will never see light of day. I must start over.

It’s hard to accept. I struggle with it because it feels like, “that’s not editing, that is rewriting.” I suppose rewriting is a kind of editing, but it feels like surrendering something to the dustbin of eternity.

I have no answer to this conundrum. Where is the line of keeping what doesn’t need to be kept, and wasting time in anxious searching for a way to rework the piece. Lipsticking the pig. Where is that line, vs the line of it should be kept and some of this is worth keeping?

I don’t know.

For now this particular story needs a rewrite.

Maybe someday I’ll learn better lines in the sand for editing, keeping vs killing. But for now... it’s into the trunk with my darlings.

The writers trunk of dark and forgotten bad stories..

Keep writing.