One of my favourite characters was trying to master a skill they were passionate about. Mastery is hard. I want to master / become adequate in writing fiction. I’m now in the place he was:
That is a disaster. I shall foreswear writing. It is beyond me and will have no more of it.
Sure enough, he was back at it within days. We can always improve, especially if our faults are obvious to a critic or a teacher.
That sentiment should form part of the “Seven stages of becoming a writer”- : in between Pride and Drudgery should come Shame.
There is advice to aspiring writers to ‘kill your darlings’ or ‘murder your darlings’ which is often attributed to Allen Ginsberg or William Faulkner, and many others. According to the Slate it was Arthur Quiller-Couch who has the earliest reference to the phrase which he used in a collection of his Cambridge Lectures on “The Art of Writing”.
If you here require a practical rule of me, I will present you with this: ‘Whenever you feel an impulse to perpetrate a piece of exceptionally fine writing, obey it—whole-heartedly—and delete it before sending your manuscript to press. Murder your darlings.
Guilty as charged m’lud. The chorus of my small readership are nodding in agreement. Fine prose is affirming to write but it’s not great to read. Why? Good writing is immersive: if you write something fancy, something clever, it pulls the reader out of the story. It really does - we can see it ourselves when we read and we notice “good writing”. And this is my current vice. I read my latest bits and I’m ashamed. That’s why I love the mix of snark and good advice in the Quiller-Couch quote.
And if you don’t suffer from this sin, or you’re in recovery? Good for you! Don’t worry, there’s always more writing sins we can both cover over in modesty. But I hope I can help with this one.
~Niall, just another junior hack.
Or please, buy me a coffee.
I'm more of the mind ... "just ship it." Cast the seed and see what grows. 😆