darlings
“Kill your darlings”, the writers say. But it applies to every kind of making. There’s a time when ruthless cuts and editing are necessary. When the best parts of our efforts must become a kind of sacrificial lamb. A tribute laid upon the altar of the muses, waiting to be consumed. Sometimes it’s the most effective way for the work to retain its structural integrity.
But this is not the only way.
“Don’t kill your darlings”, Ann Collins told me, contrarily. Instead, when you see them lean in.
The little instances of light and splendor that surface unexpectedly are not self-indulgent. They are not trivial or trifling.
They’re signaling.
They’re signposts guiding you towards a trajectory.
The colors you keep coming back to. The lines that won’t leave you be. The metaphors and structures you think you overuse. The marks and shapes you keep tracing no matter how much you try to bend them into a different directionality. These are the places where the work starts breathing. Where it whispers and shouts and misbehaves, where it refuses to relinquish you unchanged.
Often what we name as excess is more indicative of our own unfinished understanding. The little darlings we make and create and encounter aren’t evidence of preciousness. They are breadcrumbs calling to us to follow more closely. To be rigorous with our methods and obsessions. To ask ourselves harder questions. To let ourselves relax our restraint.
The iterative repetitions, the saving, the rescuing, and the salvaging, this is not redundancy. It’s refining. It’s clarity. Every pass and preservation teaches us about resilience and consistency. It’s the realization that what you thought was a crutch has always been a compass in waiting.
May you trust what keeps returning.
May you follow where the work refuses to be well-behaved.
May your darlings bring you somewhere you never imagined.
In case no one’s told you today, I love you with all my everything.
Love this … very useful as I continue ‘being ‘ with my project 🙏
Loving the color palette in all of these!