Hittings One's Stride, and the Murdering of Darlings
Folks who have been following the saga of (my writing of) Summerhill probably know by now that the going has been, for much of the time, rocky and tumultous and may have involved the pulling out of my fur. Happily, in the aftermath of Further Confusion earlier this month, I've finally hit what I'd consider "my stride" insofar as this story is concerned.
Whenever I write longer works, there usually comes a point where, after some futzing and poking and prodding, I do finally hit a threshold where the story finally "clicks" inside my head and I go into a frenzied furor of writing and typing until I have a coherent piece of fiction. With Summerhill, I've gone over the whole story several times without hitting that point, and I'm glad I've hit it now (see earlier entries in my journal for my thoughts on discovering a story's theme).
I won't lie: I'm really excited that I've gotten to this point. It might not last for the course of the entire rest of the manuscript (it's become a much longer story than it used to be), but I already know a lot of what I want to have happen for a big chunk of what comes next, and so I expect (or at least hope) that my momentum will last for some time longer. The words are flowing more readily than they ever have, and it's both thrilling and fun to feel so animated and energetic when working on the story.
Of course, just because I'm loving it now doesn't mean I'm going to love it when I finally get through it and go back to re-read it. Oh, sure, I hope I'll like the bulk of it, but I'm prepared for the eventuality that, hey, not all of it is going to be great or even good or necessarily what the finished product needs. And that brings me to that well-known writer's adage that so often gets misinterpreted: murder your darlings.
kyellgold and I have talked about this on the podcast before, but I'll go over it again here: telling a writer to "murder your darlings" does NOT mean that they should go through and take out anything they're particularly fond of. What it DOES mean is that, as a writer, you need to be prepared to get rid of things that serve no real purpose other than that you happen to like them.
This can be a hard thing to differentiate, especially when you're still learning how to edit your own stuff, and even more especially when someone else points out a part of your story and says they think you should cut it. It's very tempting to want to defend your story when someone suggests changes (again, this is something you need to learn not to do), but once you've managed to get past the stage where that's your first reaction, you then need to be able to objectively analyze a scene or a section of your writing and determine whether it's necessary or just cute.
It's important to remember that these two things aren't mutually exclusive. It's absolutely possible to be in love with a part of your story that happens to be critical to the telling thereof. Heck, I'd hope that, when you're done with your story, you like most of it. Don't mistake "I like this" for "This must die."
With Summerhill in particular, I have to admit that I'm pretty amused by how the story has gone. I started writing it in the first place based on two very strong mental images for key scenes that I wanted to write. In the current draft of the story, neither of these scenes exist anymore. Not because I liked them too much (actually, I was never entirely happy with how either came out), but because the story that grew out of my initial idea becamse something that no longer required (or even supported) those scenes happening.
I do hope that my current super-inertia in writing the manuscript continues. But I'll be sure to try to stay just as diligent in my editing to make sure that I can pick out what I ended up writing in a fit of brilliance from what I wrote in a rush to just put words onto a page.
Whenever I write longer works, there usually comes a point where, after some futzing and poking and prodding, I do finally hit a threshold where the story finally "clicks" inside my head and I go into a frenzied furor of writing and typing until I have a coherent piece of fiction. With Summerhill, I've gone over the whole story several times without hitting that point, and I'm glad I've hit it now (see earlier entries in my journal for my thoughts on discovering a story's theme).
I won't lie: I'm really excited that I've gotten to this point. It might not last for the course of the entire rest of the manuscript (it's become a much longer story than it used to be), but I already know a lot of what I want to have happen for a big chunk of what comes next, and so I expect (or at least hope) that my momentum will last for some time longer. The words are flowing more readily than they ever have, and it's both thrilling and fun to feel so animated and energetic when working on the story.
Of course, just because I'm loving it now doesn't mean I'm going to love it when I finally get through it and go back to re-read it. Oh, sure, I hope I'll like the bulk of it, but I'm prepared for the eventuality that, hey, not all of it is going to be great or even good or necessarily what the finished product needs. And that brings me to that well-known writer's adage that so often gets misinterpreted: murder your darlings.
kyellgold and I have talked about this on the podcast before, but I'll go over it again here: telling a writer to "murder your darlings" does NOT mean that they should go through and take out anything they're particularly fond of. What it DOES mean is that, as a writer, you need to be prepared to get rid of things that serve no real purpose other than that you happen to like them.
This can be a hard thing to differentiate, especially when you're still learning how to edit your own stuff, and even more especially when someone else points out a part of your story and says they think you should cut it. It's very tempting to want to defend your story when someone suggests changes (again, this is something you need to learn not to do), but once you've managed to get past the stage where that's your first reaction, you then need to be able to objectively analyze a scene or a section of your writing and determine whether it's necessary or just cute.
It's important to remember that these two things aren't mutually exclusive. It's absolutely possible to be in love with a part of your story that happens to be critical to the telling thereof. Heck, I'd hope that, when you're done with your story, you like most of it. Don't mistake "I like this" for "This must die."
With Summerhill in particular, I have to admit that I'm pretty amused by how the story has gone. I started writing it in the first place based on two very strong mental images for key scenes that I wanted to write. In the current draft of the story, neither of these scenes exist anymore. Not because I liked them too much (actually, I was never entirely happy with how either came out), but because the story that grew out of my initial idea becamse something that no longer required (or even supported) those scenes happening.
I do hope that my current super-inertia in writing the manuscript continues. But I'll be sure to try to stay just as diligent in my editing to make sure that I can pick out what I ended up writing in a fit of brilliance from what I wrote in a rush to just put words onto a page.