top of page

A Liturgy For Killing Your Darlings—W. David O. Taylor


Introduction


“It is no sign of weakness or defeat that your manuscript ends up in need of major surgery. This is common in all writing and among the best of writers.” – E. B. White


“You don’t care about those first three pages; those you will throw out, those you needed to write to get to that fourth page, to get to that one long paragraph that was what you had in mind when you started, only you didn’t know that, couldn’t know that, until you got to it.” ― Anne Lamott


I wrote this liturgy after sending off the requested revisions to my publisher. Brazos Press had asked that I cut 17,000 words from the manuscript that I had submitted to them originally. At the time, I couldn’t fathom cutting that much. I knew it would come chiefly from the footnotes, but still. 5,000 words? That I could imagine. 17,000? That was like a small booklet’s worth.


I started with the easy stuff: the obvious redundancies, the surplus quotes, the off-stage commentary on scholarly debates. After completing that initial task, I paused to count up the words, hoping that I had completed the job sufficiently. I’d only cut 7,000. I had another 10k to go. At this point, I had to look for entire paragraphs and whole stories to discard. These I had worked hard to craft, but these too would have to go.


By the end of a week’s worth of work, I had managed to cut another 7,000 words. I still had 3,000 left.


At this point in the process, a more surgical approach would be needed. I couldn’t cut mindlessly; I’d have to cut with great care. The last thing I wanted was to end up with a Frankenstein of parts—blunt transitions, truncated sentences, ill-fitting phrases, and a shape that more skeletal than spare. If I wasn’t careful, the flow of meaning from chapter to chapter would make sense only in my own head but not to the reader.


While the first round of cutting was relatively easy, this final round of cutting turned out to be rather painful. It was here that the proverbial darlings would need to be killed. (For the curious, the phrase derives not from Faulkner or Chekov but from a lesser known writer, Arthur Quiller-Couch, who in a 1914 lecture, given at Cambridge University, urged would-be writers to “murder” their darlings.)


The work wound up being mentally exhausting and it took me far longer than I had expected, because I had to completely reimagine large chunks of the book. The fault, admittedly, was of my own making. I had proposed eighteen chapters and five mini-interludes. The interludes, however, had turned into proper chapters and I’d generated a prologue and an epilogue, both of which turned out to be chapter-length.


There was no point in crying over the spilt milk, but it hurt all the same.


When I finally turned in the second draft of the manuscript, I found myself feeling both happy and refreshed. Further revisions would come, no doubt, and I would discover plenty of things to cut and tweak, but the book was leaner and cleaner and meaner. Some of the darlings, in the end, turned out not to be darlings but only excess, while other darlings were cut with a great deal of sighs and self-pitying feelings.


Writing the liturgy served, for me, as both a cathartic act and an act of gratitude. I needed a moment to let things go, to get closure, as it were, as well as to say thanks to all the words that had performed a good purpose in the original manuscript but no longer served the purposes of the book itself.


Not wanting to take the process too seriously, moreover, I kept the liturgy light, and I decided to end with a litany of gratitude so that the liturgy would end with things beyond my own self-concern. Whether it is useful to anyone else, time will tell. But my hope is that it will offer writers a way to sacralize this aspect of the writing process rather than seeing it only as a miserable waystation on the way to more-exciting things.


Even with words that can and should be cut, such words appeared for a moment on the page or the screen, and deserve to be dignified with a proper farewell, it seems to me.


I’m still cutting and whittling, and only God knows what words will remain in the final cut of the book. But it’s good to give thanks for the darlings. They may be destined to be killed off, but like the redshirts in every Star Trek movie, they served their purpose for a glorious, if only short-lived, moment.


A LITURGY FOR KILLING YOUR DARLINGS


by W. David O. Taylor


A PRAYER OF RESOLVE (To be said prior to the initial work of editing a book, article, essay, novel, script, poem, etc.) O Lord, three things I ask of you this day: To know what must be cut, make me wise, I pray. To cut what must be cut, make me brave, I pray. To cut until the cutting is done, make me strong, I pray. In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen. A PRAYER OF PETITION (To be said prior to the work of individual editing tasks) O God, guide me in this good but demanding work and guard me from fear, I pray, so that I may produce a work that might result in your glory and to the benefit of my neighbor. Amen. A PRAYER OF THANKS (To be said after all the work of editing has been completed) In the name of the God who puts all things in their proper place: I give thanks this day for all the words that will never see the light of day. For that paragraph that perished in the first round of revisions: I give thanks. For that story that told the same tale twice and needed to be sacrificed for the sake of one truly good one: I give thanks. For that sentence that sounded so good on the page but needed to be sequestered to the overflow bin: I give thanks. For that clause that contributed nothing of importance to the point at hand and needed to be cut: I give thanks. For that phrase that had to be phased out because it congested the sentence: I give thanks. For that quote that begged to be kept in but quit the page once it realized that it represented one too-many quotable quotes: I give thanks. For that word that said it all but said too much and so needed to be sheared off: I give thanks. For those three adjectives that sang a noun’s praises one too-many times and needed to be trimmed down in order to sing its praises just right: I give thanks. For those two adverbs that burdened a verb with far too-many demands and needed to be reduced to one alone: I give thanks. For that footnote that gave evidence of the author’s extraordinary powers of intelligence but bored the reader with idiosyncratic and irrelevant matter: I give thanks. For that appendix that burst the word-count limit and would have been so wonderful to include but could not: I give thanks. A PRAYER OF PRAISE (To be said after the work has been sent off to a publisher) Praise the Lord for editors who say no to authors who think they know better but do not. Praise the Lord for attentive readers who care enough to tell an author what fails to be working. Praise the Lord for strangers who bring to an author’s attention blind spots and deficiencies. Praise the Lord for friends who, in love, tell an author that it is time, finally, to be done. Praise the Lord for family who remind an author of what really matters at the end of the day. Praise the Lord for the Spirit who bears witness to the painful work of “killing your darlings.” Praise the Lord for the Son who confirms the goodness of one’s calling to write. Praise the Lord from whom all blessings flow. Praise the Lord.



W. David O. Taylor is a theologian, author, and priest. An Associate Professor of Theology & Culture at Fuller Theological Seminary, he is the author of ten books, including A Body of Praise, Prayers for the Pilgrimage and the forthcoming, To Set the World Aflame. He has written essays for The Washington Post, Image Journal, Religion News Service, and Christianity Today. On Substack, he writes at “The Diary of an Arts Pastor.“ He lives on 21 acres east of Austin with his artist wife Phaedra and his children.


 
 
bottom of page