{"id":770,"date":"2024-05-17T14:15:10","date_gmt":"2024-05-17T14:15:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2024\/05\/17\/murder-your-darlings\/"},"modified":"2024-05-17T14:15:10","modified_gmt":"2024-05-17T14:15:10","slug":"murder-your-darlings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2024\/05\/17\/murder-your-darlings\/","title":{"rendered":"“Murder Your Darlings”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Good advice. I should take it. I am too enamored of my own formulations, which I tend to repeat. Anthony Flood, a hard-working editor<\/a> who is doing some editing for me, just sent me this:<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

The phrase "murder your darlings" is often attributed to the English writer and critic Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch. He used a version of this expression in his 1914 lecture titled "On Style," which is part of his book "On the Art of Writing." The original quote is:<\/span><\/p>\n

"Whenever you feel an impulse to perpetrate a piece of exceptionally fine writing, obey it\u2014whole-heartedly\u2014and delete it before sending your manuscripts to press. Murder your darlings."<\/span><\/p>\n

This advice encourages writers to remove their most cherished or self-indulgent passages for the sake of overall clarity and quality in their writing. Over time, the phrase has been popularized and widely used by writers and writing instructors to emphasize the importance of being ruthless in editing and prioritizing the work's overall effectiveness over individual beloved segments.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I've said some unkind things<\/a> about editors, but they do provide a check on one's vanity and self-indulgence.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Good advice. I should take it. I am too enamored of my own formulations, which I tend to repeat. Anthony Flood, a hard-working editor who is doing some editing for me, just sent me this: The phrase "murder your darlings" is often attributed to the English writer and critic Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch. He used a … Continue reading ““Murder Your Darlings””<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40,214],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-770","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-literary-matters","category-reading-and-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/770","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=770"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/770\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=770"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=770"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=770"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}