Lessons in Killing Your Darlings

After two weeks away from my rewrite, I had to reread what I had already written to recall the direction I was going in and put myself in the mood of my novel, so to speak. I love rereading my own work, mostly because I forget a lot of what I wrote and I am pleasantly surprised by what I came up with on the fly some random Tuesday afternoon. Sometimes it can be painful to reread your own writing if there is a sentence that sounds awkward or you read a now-cringey dialogue. But since this is now a rewrite of an already edited manuscript, I find myself enjoying most of it, and only editing minor details here and there.

As for actually rewriting, the process is often more difficult. Painful, even. Painful not because of the errors or plot holes I need to fix (which can be very painful indeed) but because of the scenes and sentences which I love and am attached to. Kill your darlings is a saying for a reason. Sometimes deep down I know a dialogue exchange must be cut, or a descriptor must be deleted, or even an entire plot point needs to be given up. But to actually change it, to kill that version of the original manuscript, can be surprisingly emotional. I suppose I became attached to that first version because it was written freely, on a blank page, for free, for people who waited patiently for each chapter. Or maybe because it is the closest manuscript to my own thoughts and emotions at that moment in time.

Two years have passed since I began writing that first manuscript. I wrote it in a special time in my life, while living in the heart of the Roman Empire, and so each word has extra meaning to me. So in some ways, rewriting this manuscript into a new version is like leaving behind a part of myself, which, ironically, I have to leave behind anyway as I move on to another chapter of my life, even another version of myself. However painful, I try to focus on the exciting part, both for my novel and myself—the new story that is about to unfold.