Murder Your Darlings
After a lifetime online I've just registered my site with Google - about time I guess. But that's not it... I've just discovered that my all time favorite article (according to Google) is the one below. To be honest I'd forgotten I'd written it - but it even gets a mention in Wikipedia, it's so famous! Well I never. Anyway, here it is, resurrected: Murder Your Darlings “Murder your darlings” is a phrase said to have been coined by F Scott Fitzgerald. He was referring to what you might call your “best bits.” He believed that these are the very “bits” you should always edit out of your work. As Elmore Leonard once said, “If I come across anything in my work that smacks of ‘good writing,’ I immediately strike it out.” The theory is that writing you’re particularly proud of is probably self-indulgent and will stand out. You might think this is good. Wrong. You will most likely break the “fictive dream.” (This is the state of consciousness reached b