The truth is that the kill-your-darlings phenomenon is a little bit like a lust-driven love affair: no matter how painful it is to say goodbye, I’ve heard few people say that it wasn’t the right choice, or even that they truly miss their darling once it’s gone. Having killed more than a few darlings myself-including an entire novel-I asked five contemporary writers about the most painful time they cut a piece of writing. And yet, and yet - writers from Anton Chekov to Stephen King agree that one’s most precious writing often has to be cut, either because of the fact of its preciousness or because it doesn’t serve the larger work. (Or is that just me?) So you can hardly blame us for wanting to hold tight to our darlings - the favored image, the pet sentence - when we finally get them on paper. As Edan Lepucki pointed out, writers are a self-flagellating bunch: difficult to satisfy, prone to swinging wildly between absurd faith and intense self-criticism.
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