My darlings are often the bits I've taken out of other stories and kept - because they say 'nothing is wasted' - but then find myself trying to shoehorn into the latest wip. I think once dead, they should probably stay dead.


- NaomiM

I like the concept of 'dead writing'. Maybe I'll start a 'grave file' and dig it up in a few years to see what we have, though I do like to cannabalise or challenge myself to find new ways of saying really hackneyed things. I shocked myself by writing 'boomed like a drum' yesterday - dreadful! I'm also suffering this strange affliction - learning that less is more, but then I have more to tell using less, if that makes sense?

JB

'grave file'

I think I should call mine 'grave errors of judgement'

Sometimes the snippets are the 'authorial voice' peeking through, or the wrong pov, and they are unlikely to fit anywhere.

I also like what Virginia Woolf called 'Killing the Angel in the House' which means not being afraid to write what you want to write and trying to lose that fear of 'ooh, but what if my MOTHER reads this?' which makes you impose censorship all over the text - doomed before it's even begun!

'Killing the Angel in the House'... 'ooh, but what if my MOTHER reads this?'

Specially important when writing sex scenes, I find!

Waxy, I don't think I meant macho as in men vs. women, so much as a certain style of writing and critting...

Emma

Hi

Sorry just saw this. I was just being flippant. I did understand your point.

I squirmed when my mum picked up a copy of my novel. My parents were never meant to read it but they have both been troublingly diplomatic, which makes me wonder what's been said about it when I've not been around...

JB

Maybe I'll start a 'grave file'

Mine is called, Dead darlings.

When there's 80,000 words in there, I'll send it out.

~Rod

I've blogged this somewhere...
Not for the likes of us but....

Maybe it's just blatant marketing, personally I think I'd like to see a big publishing house, with a certain type of author try this. A second edition maybe – similar to a DVD style directors cut or movie out takes

Wouldn't you like to see what your favourite author deleted or adjusted, and know why? Wouldn't this make you a better writer?

Come on! Wouldn't you want to have a heart to heart with Terry Pratchet's delete key?



<Added>

Sorry, bad edit... I meant as a kind of epilogue.

You can see a photocopy of one of Stephen King's edited chapters in his book On Writing