Loading…
22
My writing teacher said 'kill your darlings' and I told her she was wrong, then lost 3 weeks on a prompt
Back in 2018 I took a short story class at the community college in Fresno, and the teacher kept repeating this one line about cutting the parts you love most because they're usually just decoration. I rolled my eyes hard, because I had this 900 word opening about a kid counting coins on a diner counter and I thought it was the best thing I had ever written. So for the next prompt, which was just the single word 'hunger,' I kept the whole coin scene even though it had nothing to do with the story. I spent 3 weeks revising that piece and every single person in the workshop said the start felt like a different story than the ending. I finally cut the diner part down to one line, and the whole thing clicked in maybe 20 minutes. She never said I told you so, which honestly made it worse. Now I want to know, what advice did you ignore for way too long before finally giving in? Did it actually help or did you just end up writing something boring?
0 comments
Log in to join the discussion
Log In0 Comments
No comments yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this discussion.