I finished my novel after working on it for 20 years (with multiple other projects in between) and sent off a round of queries. In 2012 I had sent off an earlier iteration, 110 queries, and received 59 rejections but 5 full requests! Which I felt was a win (51 non-responses). This time I sent off to just 5 carefully selected agents and received 3 rejections.
After a few months, I picked it back up, and realized – those lovely chapter fronts, the ones I crafted with so much passion and hope, that held forgotten stories, delving into the minds and characters of heroes and villains in history – they didn’t fit at all. They made no sense. The voice was completely different than the rest of the chapters, the rest of the story. They added nothing. In fact – they were a distraction.
I had to cut them.
Although generally attributed to William Faulkner and, more recently, Stephen King, the phrase ‘murder your darlings’ was actually first put into print by British writer Arthur Quiller-Couch in his 1916 work On the Art of Writing:
“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.”
One tool I use for cutting that is super helpful is to open up a Google Doc, label it ‘Cut from….’ and cut and paste all the writing from the main piece into this new document. Then it doesn’t feel so final. Maybe I’ll use it later? Maybe an editor will absolutely love the book but say it needs an extra 50,000 words…. (probably not), and I’ll have them ready!
After this cut my daughter went on a snowboarding trip with her dad and I decided to use the time alone to FINALLY COMPLETE MY NOVEL.
After cutting the superfluous chapter intros I would polish it and send it out again. No problem.
But it was a problem – it was still too long, even without those introductions, which cut about 20k. So I weeded. Took out the places I repeated myself. Took out all the ‘weak’ words – especially just that I used over 900 times.
Then I sent out 3 more queries to agents and submitted the manuscript to one publisher. March. April. Nothing. I met a writer friend who has published multiple novels for coffee, and he offered to read the first 50 pages. He followed up what I knew in my heart – the story starts later. He was very gentle and positive, but I knew behind his words was the truth – – the novel is too long. There is too much exposition at the beginning.
At 170,000 words, I knew it would be hard to get an agent to want to venture beyond dismissing my query. I needed to cut more. Why was I trying to force something that would never work? (the story of my life).
I read a piece on Thought Catalog (that I now can’t find) about a writer who had quit his job to write a novel, then was daunted about how impossible it felt when he actually had to sit down and do the work. I was so beyond that – I had already written multiple novels. Pages weren’t my problem. I had this hulking mass that made sense and was a good story – but I had too much of it. It actually wasn’t a bad problem to have.
And I would always have the old, long draft, just in case.
So I started cutting. The first thing I did was axe pages 1- 73.
My new beginning –
It already feels better – freer. I’ve put away the old draft, and it feels like a burden lifted – the ruthless cutting. I spent years on the novel. And I needed to. But the polished final will have more impact in a shorter form – and that’s the point.
BBQ Church and Beer 