“Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes.
Art is knowing which ones to keep.”
~ Scott Adams, “Dilbert” cartoonist
One of the best pieces of advice I’ve been given regarding writing is, “You have to learn to kill your darlings.” What this means is I have to learn to let go of those little nuggets that I love, but that are weighing down the story or novel or whatever it is I’m writing. Knowing the difference between a nugget that is serving the story and one that is not takes a skill only learned with time (and lots of hopefully-loving, constructive criticism).
I’m still notorious for not editing enough. I can’t bear to part with certain lines, even if they’re overkill, even if they hit the reader over the head far too hard. What I will say is that I’m better and better at noticing which lines I should take out; I just don’t always take them out. It’s the stubbornness in me, I suppose.
What makes it easier is my little black book. No, not that kind of little black book. Mine is full of my other kinds of darlings–those similes and metaphors and segments of thought that I swear belong somewhere, some day, but don’t belong in my current work. Sometimes, I flip through it after years have passed and I have no idea what I was thinking (or I can’t even read my handwriting. That’s what happens with middle-of-the-night inspiration and scrambling for a notepad on the nightstand, blindly). There are random half-thoughts like these, taken directly from my black book:
~ Who is the guy who cleans up roadkill for a living?
~ Guy goes on road trip to visit places with weird names (Hooker, CA, etc)
~ She made a game of dodging croutons
Why I thought these brilliant is a mystery to me now. And, that right there, shows progress. Or something.