Editing, a necessary aspect of a writers’ trade, but far removed from blissful joy. First to get the chop is the ‘padding’ – the non-essential descriptions. Like much of this section from my second novel, written almost twenty years ago.
Kill your darlings is advice from Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch who wrote in his 1916 book On the Art of Writing: “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.’”
Since then, variations of Quiller-Couch’s phrase has been used by many writers and scholars. Stephen King, a man with a pretty decent track record offered up advice on the art of writing in his book On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft: “Kill your darlings, kill your darlings, even when it breaks your egocentric little scribbler’s heart, kill your darlings.”
That’s me told then. Time to set about the extraneous padding and verbosity in my manuscript. There’s a problem though. I enjoy writing in a distinct style whereby I allow myself a degree of self indulgence. By now you may have guessed, these darlings survived.
“Little more than an hour later he was in the mountains, still shrouded in gloom while the sun struggled to break above the towering peaks.
The dawn he’d witnessed at sea level came much later to these high mountains and the first faint glimmer of sunlight was barely touching the surrounding hills and the distant village was silent.
He threw his bag onto the back seat of the car and stood for a moment. The decision had been made and he was ready to go back.
He allowed himself a moment’s reflection. Old memories flitted through his mind, some of them pleasant, but most were a constant reminder of unfinished business. The time had come to redress the balance. The boredom he’d been experiencing recently was a spur for the action that he knew he had to take. He’d taken the first step already and it was time to move on. Faces flashed through his mind. Faces of people to whom he’d never spoken; yet he knew everything about them and not a single day passed that he did not think of them.
Sunlight cleaved its erratic way through the early morning cloud cover, the distant hills a shimmering dusky pink while the vast expanse of sky was a vivid lazuli blue. Faint traces of dew lingered on the sparse scrub nestling beneath soft rounded boulders, the freshness of the preceding night soon to be overwhelmed by the impending day.
In the heat of summer every day was the same. With each brilliant shaft of light that invaded the landscape, fresh colours burst into life. By mid-day the heat would bleach the scene to a white glare, painful to the eye, and the valley would bake under a remorseless sun.
Tiny creatures scurried and darted, frantically seeking out shade in meagre patches of sage and bracken. Later still, the encircling hills would turn to gold as the sun dipped lower in the sky until each successive peak was tipped with vivid pink, the lower slopes marked by ever-deepening shades of indigo. Flocks of birds would plunge and soar in a final riot of activity before settling down to roost, the last vestiges of discernible colour slipping away, marking the final passage of another day.
The arrival of each succeeding sunrise pushed the barriers of light and shade to the limit, yet the man standing as still as one of the ancient encircling stones experienced nature’s wonders at first hand on a daily basis and it meant nothing to him.
His priorities lay elsewhere.
He opened the car door, climbed inside and moments later the engine roared into life. He never looked back as he drove away from his remote dwelling for the last time.”
Gulliver Smith 