Maybe Don’t Kill Your Darlings
Have them take a little nap
🦉 A Tip
Look, I don’t love revising my creative endeavors—even when I know they need work. Going back into the draft and rearranging and rewriting can be daunting. This is not helped by how editing is usually described. You’re cutting words, you’re erasing carefully drawn pencil lines, you’re crumpling up your art—literally, sometimes—and throwing it in the bin. It’s described as a painful removal, when in fact it’s more of a rebirth for your work.
Take the phrase “kill your darlings.” It’s violent. It’s mean. It makes it sound like removing elements you like will take part of your soul away. So, two thoughts. 1) Use another, less dramatic phase. 2) Keep this one in the back of your head (it’s pervasive and hard to dislodge from your brain) but instead of killing your darlings, give them a nap.
By that I mean, take your darlings and put them in another document. As I remove chunks of story (13,000 words this week, I’m fine), I put them in another document just in case. It does not matter that yes, those words are in earlier drafts. I like having a separate document of things I’ve cut for easy reference and also for shameless self-encouragement—did I mention I cut 13,000 words? Maybe you’ll go back to your darlings and bring them back in. Maybe you’ll pull them out in bits and pieces. But they’ll be there, waiting quietly, not dead.
🌠 A Prompt
Apply this to writing, art, crafts, whatever fits for you!
A giant wades into the deepest lake you can imagine. Deep enough to accommodate this towering giant. The giant has never seen or experienced anything like this endless lake. What is the giant feeling? How does the giant react to the water surrounding their body?
🍄 A Tool
A free or low-cost tool to help your productivity & creativity!
I use this tool more in my day job to appease the SEO gods, but Hemingway is an editing app that can help you easily identify long sentences, passive voice, and more. There’s a paid version but I just use the free one and it’s helpful!
🌜 Something Helpful
Something I’ve found helpful in my creative endeavors!
I recently borrowed Chuck Wendig’s Gentle Writing Advice from the library and will be adding it to my shelves soon. It’s exactly what it says and embraces the subjective parts of the creative process and how to do what works for you without listening to the “it must be this way or you’re not a real writer!” bs.
That Hemingway App is awesome.