One of my darlings I had to kill

William Faulkner wrote, “In writing you must kill your darlings.”

So what does that actually mean? It means that piece of perfect prose or amazing analogy you have spent weeks agonizing over, the one that elevates your work to a new level but doesn’t fit with the story you are telling, must go.

It can be hard to say goodbye, but if you want to write with clarity and strength, rather than meander through a series of prettily written passages that take the reader nowhere, kill your darlings you must.

I recently had to do it in my manuscript. I had discovered an image that not only drew comparisons between my childhood story and a weapon of war, but that also hit me on a visceral level as a true representation of how the disintegration of my family felt. It was a shining beacon of perfection. But there was a problem.

This glowing passage, by its very nature, had to be written in an adult voice. And my story is written from my child perspective. So, though I loved it, still think it is a brilliant analogy, you will only find echoes of it in my book. And I am okay with that, because though I love clever writing, I love story more.

That doesn’t mean, however, that no one will ever see the analogy. You can see it right here, right now. How lucky are you! So here it is, the darling I had to kill.

***

When a bomb goes off, it causes damage in different ways – rupturing, tearing and piercing.

Firstly, the blast forces highly compressed air particles to travel faster than the speed of sound, rupturing air-filled structures like the lung, ear, and gut.

Then, more intense energy in the form of shockwaves passes through the organs and tissues, disrupting molecules and tearing at internal structures.

Moving into secondary fragmentation, the bomb casing and shrapnel is thrown violently outward piercing soft flesh and releasing more dangerous fragments when it strikes buildings and glass.

Finally, when the vacuum created by the rapid outward movement of the blast refills itself with the surrounding atmosphere, it creates a high-intensity wind that causes people, buildings and fragmented objects to be drawn back in toward the source of the explosion.

I didn’t know it yet, but Dad’s leaving had thrown a bomb into our family. In a few short days, our lives would be blown apart. I was about to spend the next six years sifting through wreckage…

I reassured myself that tomorrow Mum would be back to her old self, standing at the stove cooking chops and veges for dinner…

It turned out, I was very wrong. The highly compressed air had already blasted from the bomb. The concrete structure of rules and schedules that had defined my life with Dad was razed to the ground, and the mother I had always known was never coming back.

***

So there it is. My darling does live after all. Have you killed any darlings lately?