Almost two years ago, CBS Sunday Morning correspondent David Pogue paid tribute to his mentor Stephen Sondheim after his death. The subject of editing came up. I’d just talked to my daughter on the phone a few days before and we had talked about writing. I’d asked her which of her high school teachers, if any, had helped her with her writing.
“Honestly, I wasn’t until law school. I had a professor who said cut, cut, cut.”
How true. In Rain Dodging you meet my Oxford professor. He agreed to beta read for me and here is one of his comments:
“I think that this would (painful though it will be!)
benefit from being shorter – so an edit that just goes
through coldly and asks whether everything is
necessary, and whether the way you put it really
distills your intentions for having it there.”
The quotation, In writing, you must kill all your darlings, is mainly attributed to William Faulkner. However, early 20th century, Cornish writer and literary critic Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch (1863-1944) was an earlier source.*
“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.”
Sorry Rain Dodging, darling, over 50 pages slashed.
* In his Cambridge inaugural lecture series published as On the Art of Writing.
