Kill Your Darlings

William Faulkner is supposed to have once told a group of writers that when writing, they should "kill your darlings." Those bits of writing that you're particularly in love with, that you keep in because you just love the way it sounds or whatever. That these bits of writing will bog you down, hold you back.

Today, in working on my current chapter, I killed many darlings. I'd been itching to delete some pages for a while, have even already deleted some. It's hard to do. I wrote that stuff, and it makes the chapter longer, which feels like progress. But I killed. I drew squiggly lines through stuff about the audience for Buffy. I drew squiggly lines through the sort of apologia for academic study of Buffy. I took out the introductory bits on the series. I deleted deleted deleted.

I also wrote a little bit, but more writing will come after I've read the stuff I worked on today. I still don't have a conclusion to this chapter, am still not exactly sure what to end it with. But I'm feeling much better today (the committee member did get back to me and offered an apology for not writing sooner. So that's good. I know she's busy and I know I haven't exactly pressed forward rapidly myself. So hold off on the voodoo dolls and whatnot.) Whatnot. Great word that.

Andrew and the babies are all resting. They've all had trying days, for various reasons. My sister comes into town tonight, and that's good. I bought some cool stuff for the Broccoliette's baby shower. Pink stuff. That's good. I ate a mango & apricot yogurt. The babies had their first "cookie"-- one of those gerber biter biscuits that would probably be really good with a cup of coffee. They loved the cookies (Maia gnawed on hers like a little ear of corn-- up one side, down the other.)

Me. I'm going to go indulge myself in digital scrapbooking, or maybe just doing nothing for a while.

I have a poem resting in my head that I hope to write soon. It's there, just not ready to be birthed yet.

It feels like late August here today (in January). Maybe it will actually get cold.