In Writing, You Must Kill All Your Darlings

Before anyone freaks out over the title, know that it's a quote from William Faulkner. And it's true, by the way. Killing your darlings doesn't necessarily mean killing off the characters you love the most. I think it means killing off sections, sentences, and words that you love but that don't fit right or that distract from the purpose of your writing. It's hard to do, but it's necessary. Enough with the mini-lesson.

In November, I wrote my first novel. Well, I wrote the first draft, which is nowhere near ready for the eyes of anyone else. I basically haven't touched my novel since I finished it. I've had other projects I was working on, and those projects took all of my free time. But now I have my free time back, and that's both exciting and a little intimidating because I know what I need to do in my free time. I need to take my novel back out and start step two, which is the hardest step, in my opinion--Revision.

I tried to revise my novel a week or two ago, but it was a little tedious to scroll through 168 pages on my computer to find what chapters need to go where, so I decided to print it out at Staples so I can manually arrange it. And let me tell you; it was one of the most beautiful things I've seen.

Seeing the thickness of that stack of papers made me feel all giddy. I know; I'm strange. But it's hard to visualize how much you've written until you see it all printed out.

And now my novel has taken residence on my floor, organized into chapters. Today starts the process of killing my darlings and making a better story in the end.