Killing My Darlings

Anyone who writes has to learn to do two things — write with passion and edit with a vengeance. Writing with passion isn’t that hard to do if you love your subject but editing — that’s tough, that’s really tough. We all want to think that every word we write is exquisite and a gift to the world. Trust me on this, it isn’t. Years ago in a creative writing class a teacher had us do a terrible exercise. We did a themed, free writing exercise as usual and then, instead of reading aloud as usual, we were instructed to tear them up. Oh, the wailing and gnashing of teeth! But it was a good lesson to learn.

I recently regained control of my first novel, The Old Mermaid’s Tale, which was in the hands of an agent who claimed she loved and thought it was absolutely beautiful but who just never got around to really pitching it. Alas. This is the third time I have been through this. The agents say wonderful things — beautifully written, compelling characters, unique storyline, high literary merit. Well, it’s the last one that always hangs them up. Literary merit is nice in theory but a hard sell these days.

So, once again, I am going through it and editing. It’s hard at times. Hemingway said, “Kill your darlings” and that is truthful but hard advice. If you love anything too much, chances are you aren’t seeing it with clear eyes. You have to be ruthless. One of the things I am realizing as I work on the book this time is that I have now gained enough distance from my love of the characters and the plot (such as it is) to step back and see the problem areas.

I know one of my problems both as a writer and as a person is a tendency to try over-hard to explain things. If I think I am not being understood in a particular area, I will try approaching it from different perspectives until I feel my audience has gotten what I am trying to say. This can be tiresome — both for me and those who have to deal with it. I am seeing a lot of that in this read-through of the book.

One of the wonderful things about fiction writing is that you get to create a world. I realize now that in creating the world in which this book is set, I described to the point of tedium the settings. I can remember sitting at my desk drawing maps of the streets and of the buildings on the streets to make sure the reader would understand that if you turned right off of Front Street onto Canal you would pass....blah, blah, blah. Readers don’t care. They’re not sitting in their chairs thinking “wait a minute, this doesn’t make sense, before she said the laundromat was on the left not on the right.” The reader just wants to get past the laundromat to the next action.

This has been interesting. I’ve crossed out paragraphs of description and I’m betting no one will ever know, or care, how meticulously I created this world. And that doesn’t matter. Also, since the book is written in the first person from the perspective of Clair, an intelligent but highly romantic young woman, there is a great deal of introspection — as there always is with highly romantic young women. This is not a bad thing but the reader doesn’t need to hear it twice. Lines like That didn’t seem possible to me. “Are you sure that’s possible,” I asked need to be slashed. Either think it or say it but don’t make the reader read the thought twice.

So I am editing with a vengeance and actually rather enjoying it. For one thing, since I have been working on this book for years now, it is gratifying to see that it still holds up. The story still rings true without that where-was-I-at-in-my-life-when-I-wrote-this-drivel horror.

Maybe this novel is just an attempt in futility but, even if it never goes farther than my desk drawer, I want it as good as it can be. My darlings need to be sacrificed for the greater good of the whole. Oh well.

Thanks for reading.