This morning, I'm editing a story for a short story contest. When I first wrote the story, I wrote it as an origin story for one of my characters and an exploration into cross-cultural relationships. For the contest, I knew I would have to edit out about 500 words to meet the word count.
But then, in the middle of editing words out, I realized several things. First, that the story could and should stand alone from its original purpose, so I edited out references to the magical realism world it came from. Next, embarrassingly, that there wasn't enough tension in the story to make it memorable. I want to place the biggest part of the tension internally, not externally, even though there's tension in the relationship between the two characters as well.
Writing is this process in which getting the ideas down on paper is only the first part. Refining the story into something that's not just readable but skillful becomes the harder part. The hardest part is looking at what you've written with a critical eye, carving away parts of the story that do not serve their purpose, no matter how much one loved them when they were written. This is why the rule of editing is "Kill your darlings," because in effect that is what the writer does in polishing.
I'm off now to kill my darlings.
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