It's the hardest writer's motto to follow, but one that yields the most success. Kurt Vonnegut's expansion on that axiom is one I love as well: "If a sentence, no matter how well-constructed, fails to illustrate your point in a meaningful way, you must scratch it out."

Or a variation on that:

"Read over your compositions, and wherever you meet with a passage which you think is particularly fine, strike it out." -Samuel Johnson

Cracks my shit up. So true.

"Kill your darlings." - William Faulkner

The way I learned it, it was "murder." Far more sinister.

Not to mention, more Minearian.

Or is that redundant?

Again.

P-C, having done a little research, I find that the web is (unsuprisingly) very very confused about the quote. About half the sites say it is "Kill" and the other half say "Murder".

So, being the obsessive tyke that I am, I rushed over to Bartleby.com and discovered that Faulkner, if he ever did say either one, was actually quoting someone else.

Yes indeed, this phrase appears to have first appeared in Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch's text, On the Art of Writing, published in 1916.

Here is the paragraph that contains it originally:

To begin with, let me plead that you have been told of one or two things which Style is not; which have little or nothing to do with Style, though sometimes vulgarly mistaken for it. Style, for example, is not—can never be—extraneous Ornament. You remember, may be, the Persian lover whom I quoted to you out of Newman: how to convey his passion he sought a professional letter-writer and purchased a vocabulary charged with ornament, wherewith to attract the fair one as with a basket of jewels. Well, in this extraneous, professional, purchased ornamentation, you have something which Style is not: and 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.’

I now return you to your regular Minearverse, already in progress. I accept that I am a tremendous geek obsessed with source citation and should likely be mocked.

Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch's text, On the Art of Writing, published in 1916.

Helene Hanff's beloved Q, whom she never met but quoted often, and upon whose library she based her own.

I think Kristin's the coolest.

And some movie somewhere has a scene where a book is stabbed with a dagger, and blood comes out, and that's what y'all are reminding me of, despite the fact that I've heard the quote before.

Though it is an evil book, naturally.

And now I'm thinking that that image could very well be from "Hocus Pocus." Hmm. Unlike Kristin, I am too lazy to check.

Some time ago a friend was writing a three part monster book (s). The first two were out and we all wanted to know how it ended. "Everybody dies" was his reply. He was very close to the truth.

According to Variety, Tim is taking over as exec producer on The Inside, a midseason replacement on FOX.

[link]

Oh Tim, that sure sounds heartbreakingly familiar. Fox ain't worth the agita.