One of my primary tasks today is one that pops up from time: I’m killing my darlings.
My writing friends are likely familiar with William Faulkner’s assertion that “In writing, you must kill all your darlings,” but the principle applies in other areas of our lives too.
A large portion of my waking hours involve writing so I spend a lot of my time typing words and phrases that I love, and then I invest even more time killing those darlings — that is, the clutter that makes my prose sluggish and boring.
It’s hard work; painful and unfulfilling when I’m engaged in it.
But I’m happy once the work is done, not just because it hurts to delete words that I thought were grand when I first typed them, but because the end product is better.
Now, that’s the writing-side, but I also need to constantly kill the other darlings in my life.
Those are the things that accumulate over time and clutter up my life, making my life sluggish and unproductive.
These darlings take on many forms — time-consuming habits (both good and bad), unnecessary reading materials (i.e., those that are unrelated or unhelpful for my personal and professional growth), and the like.
So today, I’m happy to be adding some new projects to my TO DO list.
But I’m also doing my best to kill the darlings that are no longer relevant and are weighing me down.
If you think about it, you most likely have a few darlings of your own that you need to kill.
It’s painful, but you’ll be glad you did it.
Do it!
Photo by Jessica Lewis on Unsplash