Forum / Kill your darlings. No, wait, don't!

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    David Ackley
    Oct 24, 01:25pm

    "...I will never give up a beautiful fragment, just because it doesn't fit into the story."

    Michel Houellebecq

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    James Lloyd Davis
    Oct 24, 02:12pm

    Too late, David. The postmodern freeway's littered with aesthetic displacements, excised rhetoric, belles lettres and other roadkill.

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    David Ackley
    Oct 24, 02:21pm

    Just to clarify. Houellebecq means, I think, that he would leave a " beautiful fragment," in a work even it didn't particularly serve the story. Beauty trumps coherence in his view, which is exactly opposed to the notion of "kill your darlings."

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    James Lloyd Davis
    Oct 24, 02:32pm

    Yes, I got that, but I personally trump coherence at every opportunity, it seems. Which is okay, since I don't punch in at anyone's word factory, so I'm allowed to seem inexact.

    "Nobody says I gotta make sense."
    Godfrey Wittgenstein (Ludwig's half brother and part time pommelier {sic})

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    James Lloyd Davis
    Oct 24, 02:50pm

    But, yes, the editing process seems to have hijacked the beauty of prose. I personally blame Gordon Lish, not that he'd really care.

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    Henry Standing Bear
    Oct 24, 03:44pm

    A lot of this is confusing to my simple mind. But if something fits, or works well, in a story. Try your best not to give a shit and leave it in. For what it's worth. If you don't want to, that's fine as frog hair, too. Big ups to writers with balls. Those writers are the best. Plain and simple.

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    Javed Hayat
    Oct 24, 05:30pm

    Ditto to what Sheldon said. Write without fear. I wonder how many of the golden rules of writing MCcarthy follows...

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    James Lloyd Davis
    Oct 24, 05:44pm

    Every good writer should seek to have courage, a thick skin, proper footwork, a consistently practiced 3 & 5 punch combination, and a friend in publishing.

    Other than that, he or she should write, write, write, write...

    Anyway, back to work.

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    Matthew Robinson
    Oct 24, 08:11pm

    Write, write, write...

    STAB STAB STAB STAB STAB STAB STAB STAB

    Write, write, write...

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    James Lloyd Davis
    Oct 24, 08:35pm

    Blood for ink, yah?

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    Matthew Robinson
    Oct 24, 09:12pm

    Always, James.

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