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Kill Your Darlings AND THE BAD GUYS!
Sep. 12th, 2012 09:47 amYeah, so seriously--"kill the bad guys." What a f**king brilliant plan. You are exactly right, my friend. Exactly. Right.
After reading that comment to yesterday's post, I woke up an realized, "Yeah, that's what I've got to do: Kill all my darlings, AND THE BAD GUYS!" So, I'm going to do it. I'm going to go all Kelly Barnhill* on my proposal's a$$. There's going to be a bloodbath of "Select-All, Delete" and it will be awesome!
*For those of you just tuning in to the story already in progress, 1) I've been stuck on my proposal for a week and a half, and 2) to "go Kelly Barnhill" is my writer-brain code word for the nuclear option.
In a previous post, I described how, sometime last year, when I shared a panel on writing with the mild-mannered appearing Ms. Barnhill, I discovered the truth: she's a word-slaying NINJA OF DOOM. Her plan for revision her novel _seriously_ goes like this, "Hem, hem: I hit 'Select-All, Delete'" She means it, kids. The whole novel--all 80,000 to 100,000 words of it goes into the great pixilization Mount Doom lava pit with no hope of recovery--"ahhhhhh! My Precious!" (Though I guess her husband now INSISTS on some back-up plan these days, now that she has contracts and stuff). Then she opens a brandnew document and starts the whole novel over FROM SCRATCH. I nearly fainted dead away when she told us that and I wasn't sure Michael Mirriam would EVER recover from the shock-induced heart attack/living nightmare this caused nearly every writer present to simultaneously experience.
So, yeah.
Of course, I'm a lily-white pansy compared to the fearless Ms. Barnhill. There will be a back-up document stored in any number of safe locations. HOWEVER, I am going to open up a new document and do a complete do-over. Just watch me!
Now, I'm off to my regular Women of Wyrdsmith's Wednesdays, wherein I shall daintily sip tea and be F**KING FEARLESS.
After reading that comment to yesterday's post, I woke up an realized, "Yeah, that's what I've got to do: Kill all my darlings, AND THE BAD GUYS!" So, I'm going to do it. I'm going to go all Kelly Barnhill* on my proposal's a$$. There's going to be a bloodbath of "Select-All, Delete" and it will be awesome!
*For those of you just tuning in to the story already in progress, 1) I've been stuck on my proposal for a week and a half, and 2) to "go Kelly Barnhill" is my writer-brain code word for the nuclear option.
In a previous post, I described how, sometime last year, when I shared a panel on writing with the mild-mannered appearing Ms. Barnhill, I discovered the truth: she's a word-slaying NINJA OF DOOM. Her plan for revision her novel _seriously_ goes like this, "Hem, hem: I hit 'Select-All, Delete'" She means it, kids. The whole novel--all 80,000 to 100,000 words of it goes into the great pixilization Mount Doom lava pit with no hope of recovery--"ahhhhhh! My Precious!" (Though I guess her husband now INSISTS on some back-up plan these days, now that she has contracts and stuff). Then she opens a brandnew document and starts the whole novel over FROM SCRATCH. I nearly fainted dead away when she told us that and I wasn't sure Michael Mirriam would EVER recover from the shock-induced heart attack/living nightmare this caused nearly every writer present to simultaneously experience.
So, yeah.
Of course, I'm a lily-white pansy compared to the fearless Ms. Barnhill. There will be a back-up document stored in any number of safe locations. HOWEVER, I am going to open up a new document and do a complete do-over. Just watch me!
Now, I'm off to my regular Women of Wyrdsmith's Wednesdays, wherein I shall daintily sip tea and be F**KING FEARLESS.