Don’t Be a Pageant Mom
9 Jun
Screengrab from the HBO documentary "Living Dolls"
While I understand the sentiment, I’ve always felt that the old writing saw “kill your darlings” suffered from being both overly macho (Ooh, you big bad killer you) and poorly timed (Why not help prevent me from making darlings in the first place?).
Now look at the picture above.
Don’t we all have a story tucked in a drawer somewhere that reads like this poor kid looks?
You’re the boss of your work. You can make it be anything you want it to be. You are in COMPLETE CONTROL.
But don’t be a pageant mom, okay?
This is such a great metaphor. I’m glad you didn’t kill it.
Hmm. Was this triggered by the wordcount discussion over at Moonrat’s place? Whether or not they’re darlings and whether or not you’re killing them, all those baroque little curlicues aren’t a bad place to start looking if you have to cut down the words.
OTOH, take “baroque little curlicues” for an example: is THAT a darling? if you make it just “curlicues” is it “better”? if you change it completely to “little touches”?
Agree with Arika. Love the pageant-mom analogy!
I’m not sure I’m qualified to be in complete control.
Moonrat’s word count discussion has been excellent, but this post was triggered by a radio interview I heard with smart, talented (and established) author who trotted out that lazy darling-killing nonsense.
I am going to defend the killing of darlings. As I understand it, the advice boils down to “be objective about your work.” The advice was given to me in the context of a group brainstorming; i.e., don’t defend ideas just because you came up with them, look for the best ones, period. Which is a bit different than not being a pageant mom — forcing your ideas to look and act in ways that are both premature and disturbingly inappropriate.
Both writers and hobbyists write lots of darlings.
Real writers know which ones actually fit in this story.
I smother my emotions about this by keeping an outtakes file for every story and book.
my daughter dose pageant but there always going to be up to here . i will never force her to a pageant . my daughter loves it she even say so . if you dont like pageants well thats your opinion .we pageant moms do like pageant and you should not be rude if you never been to one .