Courage: Completing the Book
From my Newsletter, December 2006.
This year I had the opportunity to work with two magnificent writers, helping them complete their manuscripts. One was writing fiction, one non-fiction. I was amazed to observe that the necessity for both was the same: to let go of their own attachment to the writing or the stories in order to serve the needs of the book.
I watched one (the non-fiction writer) letting go of large swaths of good material to focus on the real story. I watched the other (the fiction writer) let go of good sentences, words, images, just because they were not needed. They cluttered, but didn’t enhance, the writing. I believe this is what Stephen King refers to when he writes in his book On Writing, “Kill your darlings.”
I’m continually awed by the courage that’s required to get up every day and serve the book, not yourself, continually cutting, not adding, until you get down to the core and finally can let it go because nothing remains but the essence. It’s like Michalangelo cutting away what didn’t belong from the marble, until what he left us with was the David.
Perhaps it’s not wise to point out to those of you who are in the earlier stages of writing, what awaits you when you get down to the end, but I think this part of the process is not always acknowledged and honored as it should be.
Wherever you are in the process, remember that it’s brave and important work we are doing, facing that blank page (or screen) and telling what we believe needs to be said.