Lesson #1: Kill your darlings

Now, there are a number of lessons I have had to learn over the last number of years. Above them all, this one has taken me further than any other. And yes, it’s harsh. And yes, it’s not what we want to hear. But it’s true.

Kill your darlings.

…but, but, I love my darlings!

Yes, well, I’m not talking about the trope of killing your characters to make your audience weep. No, those are characters. Those aren’t the darlings that need to die.

The darlings in question are the works you have written.

And no, I don’t think you should burn them. But you need to let them go. I didn’t. For the longest time I stuck to my first story. I labored over bits and pieces, polished until it and I bled, and sure, up until a point, the work improved. I got to write paragraphs like this:

There is no anger in her. No resentment. I push a spot so sore, so tender, so fragile in all its glory, and all she presents is the infinite sadness of promises broken.

That’s great, why kill that?

Simply put, the return of investment fell off a cliff. I had other stories that lived eternally on the back burner. I never thought I’d get there. I figured this would be my one book. The first draft took years. Many years. How could I ever start that again?

But then I did. I had a story. A different story. I described it to friends as a mind-cleanser. Something to take me out of the world I had written and into something else. A way to switch contexts. A way to move on.

And I did. Sure, it wasn’t a tome. It was barely sixty thousand words. But, it was different. A new start. And it took me three months. It had been years since I had produced even ten thousand new words in a month.

So, uhm, that’s cool, I suppose?

Yeah. It was. I was no longer polishing. I was creating.

And it felt damn good.

So I did a bit of polish, and then did it again. A new project. Four more books. In a series. Totaling over four hundred thousand words. With polish. With rewrites. That took three years and eight months. And now I’m looking at what to do next.

All because I kill my darlings.