T.S. Elliot, one of my favorite writers said, "good writers borrow, great writers steal." I don't know if this is quite what I'm doing in the title, I'm probably just ripping off Faulkner, but I think it is true. (Sorry for the convoluted sentence.) What I'm trying to say is that when I edit I don't want to kill my darlings like Faulkner tells me to. I like my darlings. There are parts of Guardians that have been there since the beginning, which means that I've inevitably gotten attached. While there are some that I'm going to cut completely because they aren't very good, or they don't fit into the story anymore. I'm not completely attached to anything. I've actually killed what used to be the first pages of the story.
There are some parts of the story though that seem like they should fit but they just don't. The concept is fine but the writing style is off. Or the general plot still fits into the storyline but the specifics don't work anymore with the plot changes I've made. And this is where I have the great pleasure of tweaking my darlings. Tweaking can mean anything from taking out a few sentences to overhauling everything word. But if the concept works with the whole story, there's no point in killing my darlings completely.
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