Building The Monster
The fibers of the unbleached twine dug into the sides of Arnold’s mouth slicing his skin open. Drops of blood raced down his cheeks as the rope cut in deeper and deeper.
In front of him stood his worst nightmare. His two young boys Howie and Stephen sat gagged and bound screaming only with their eyes.
The man standing over Arnold grew impatient. He held the gun in Stephen's direction and screamed “Pick or it’s both!”
“I choose me!” Arnold said between sobs. “I choose me.” His head hung in defeat wishing this nightmare would be over.
The man with the gun held the barrel between Arnold’s eyes, suddenly a flash of light, then everything went black.
Killing your children isn’t easy and neither is killing stories.
When we create something from scratch we feel a sense of connection to it. We birthed an idea from the ether of thoughts and let it gestate in our minds until it became something that could stand on its own. That in itself is worth celebrating!
Sometimes, more often than not, we create a mutant. Its whole existence is suffering and it would be in the best interest of ourselves, the creation, and society to kill it and start over.
Killing a story is never easy though. We feel attached and like a parent whose raising a serial killer despite the warnings, we see so much potential.
I’m writing this post to encourage you to not kill your darlings but instead let them hibernate.
In “On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft” Stephen King says after finishing a story he won’t look at it for a MINIMUM of six weeks.
This allows him to get excited about a different project that way when he returns to his old mutant of a creation, he’s not as emotionally attached.
Many times I’ve written a story and gone off on a tangent unrelated to what I was initially writing. As I returned I ended up writing a completely different story but I wouldn’t have gotten there had I not put in the work previously.
The first draft was Frankenstein’s monster but after time away, I began to see a glimpse of humanity within it. Give yourself more credit and be patient with the process, your story isn’t bad, it just needs more time.