'Kill Your Darlings'

Horribly Inspired by Stephen King

Photo by Tengyart on Unsplash

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The voices made me do it. Strident voices, screaming insistence. Nagging away. Do it. Kill your babies. The horror of pre-dawn. Sneaking up on myself. Knowing it changes everything. She pleaded with me not to. Mothers are like that. She’d always loved it the way it was. Please don’t, her hand on my arm. Shaking her off, shaking off the doubts. Thinking about it now, it wasn’t so hard. Resolve gave me unexpected strength. Again and again. Repeated cuts, ignoring the mess. Slashing, as if in a daze. Cut, cut, eyes glazing. Unexpectedly emotionless. Kill your darlings, he said—the master of horror, cheerleader to the other voices in my head. Slash, kill … cut, kill … slice, kill them all. Knowing it changes everything. Life will never be the same. Awakening the savage inside me. Coldly discriminate. Cut, slash, slice. Left breathless, head in hands.

There’s just me now—an author, alone with a finished manuscript.

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(157 words)

The phrase “kill your darlings” has been attributed to many writers over the years. Writers as varied as Oscar Wilde, G. K. Chesterton, and William Faulkner have been credited with coming up with the phrase. But many scholars point to British writer 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 had this to say 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.”

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