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April 28, 2025 15 mins

If you’ve spent time in writing circles or writing workshops or writing advice threads, at some point you will have run into the concept of killing your darlings. This is the idea that sometimes you have to cut the parts of your text that you love for the greater good of your piece. Some people take this idea so seriously that they cut their darlings unilaterally – just “Do I love it? It’s got to go.” Personally, I think this is going too far. It’s possible your darling is the heart of your piece. You’ve got to evaluate it as a whole to really know if that particular darling needs to be killed.

I recently realized, though, that one of the darlings I often have to kill is the first one.

To keep reading Kill Your First Born⁠ visit the Songs for the Struggling Artist blog.

This is Episode 445

Song: First Born

Image by Jen Theodore via ⁠⁠⁠⁠Unsplash⁠⁠⁠⁠

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