#I struggled a frustrating 24hrs with that one single sentence

[miss-ingno]

kill your darlings, except that sentence isn't a darling, it's barely functional and actually, you hate those words, any other words would be better, but it serves its function, and having to come up with new words to replace it with is work, more work than you're capable of right this moment, and do you even have to put in the energy to kill that not-even-a-darling if it works, not fine but just enough?

you know you'll feel better once you rewrite that sentence, once you find better words, but the words aren't coming, and perfect is the enemy of good, so you try to tell yourself it's fine, actually, it's clumsy as hell wording but it gets your point across, and so what if you stumble over it when re-reading your own draft? it's not good, but it's not the worst either, it's just nagging at the back of your brain and you can't stop thinking about it, but better words aren't coming, either...

killing your darlings is hard, and so is killing not-even-darlings, but I did it, and my story is better for it

#writing #kill your darlings #I struggled a frustrating 24hrs with that one single sentence #and just as I decided to hit post anyway #the better alternative came along #idk what the moral of the story is #but that's life I guess #editing is hard