I thinned my carrots yesterday. I know some gardeners who don’t thin, and they’re always amazed by the size and productivity of my garden. “I put all that work into growing them,” they say. “I just can’t pull them out and kill them!” But you have to kill them. You have to murder your darlings if you want the biggest and best seedlings to produce to their full potential. To become marketable plants.
I’m in the editing stage for my latest manuscript right now, and there’s that phrase again - kill your darlings. “But I put so much effort into writing that perfect sentence!” Kill your darlings. Maybe I can pull it and transplant it somewhere else, but most likely it just needs to go onto the compost pile. The essential elements of it may end up in a manuscript next year, and I won’t even know it. The important thing is that I give the other sentences in my manuscript room to do their job.
Tami,
ReplyDeleteFinally finished editing Book One of the submission and have started on Book Two so I can really relate to what you are saying.
I've figured out, sort of, how to use One Note that came with my software and now I do have a place to 'transplant' if I really can't bear the thought of 'killing the darlings'.
Congrats on finishing Book One!!! Yay!
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