Sunday, August 9, 2015

Killing all the darlings

Rereading a partial novel I started late last year and has been in various stages of revision, I noticed lots of little passages that were, um, "delicious," as in I probably thought I was being clever at the time, but looking at them with fresh eyes is a bit too much. I've gotten the note before, in workshops, that my writing is too sarcastic, and my characters -- wait for it -- unrelatable. And they were always blind reads, so I can't use sexism as a scapegoat. I think I'll start a file of all the little phrase I love I know readers would roll their eyes at.