This is not your typical blog post.
Or at least, it’s not my typical blog post. I hope you don’t mind, but I’ve cheated a bit this week. Rather than offering you fresh thoughts newly sprung from my pen, I’m giving you old material.
No, not just old material. Dead material.
Last week I wrote about how editors exhort writers to “murder their darlings.” Per the wise words of my wise editor, I’m murdering a lot of darlings these days. There’s no doubt that my book will be better for it within a few weeks, but in the meantime their blood is on my hands and I’m afraid if I don’t appease their spirits they may begin to haunt me like a regular Lady Macbeth.
I’ve thus created a new page here on my site where good sentences can go to die: my Darling Graveyard.
I’ve already laid a few passages to rest there and I’m sure the number will grow in the days ahead. Rather than ramble on any further over here in the blogosphere of the living, I’ll give you time to pay your respects.
LADY MACBETH Here’s the smell of the blood still. All
the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little
hand. O, O, O!
DOCTOR What a sigh is there! The heart is sorely
charged.
William Shakespeare
Macbeth