There’s a bit of literary advice provided by author William Faulkner to aspiring writers:

“Kill your darlings.”

The point here is that while novices tend to go hog wild with flowery turns of phrase, experienced scribes know good writing requires a careful pruning of overblown prose. No matter how much you may like that particular sentence or paragraph, if it doesn’t move the piece forward effectively, it needs to be axed.

The TL;DR version: New writers write their message in unnecessarily long ways, while the pros are great at getting the same message across in short order. Be a ruthless editor.

Many other writers felt the same way about the characters they created. For instance, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle grew extremely tired of his famed detective, Sherlock Holmes.

He once wrote: “I have had such an overdose of him that I feel towards him as I do towards paté de foie gras, of which I once ate too much, so that the name of it gives me a sickly feeling to this day.”

Doyle did kill off the famed detective, but public outcry was so great he found a way to resurrect him for additional sleuthing.

Another famed fictional detective – Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot – continued his career long after the author’s passion for his adventures had burned dim. But Christie soldiered on, released Poirot’s final chapter in 1975 – a story she’d written in the 1940s.

Upon his demise, Poirot received the honor of a front page obituary in the New York Times. It mourns the loss, noting that his career “was one of the most illustrious in fiction.”

When managing a portfolio, you sometimes have to consider killing a darling here and there as well. That’s why it’s wise to have expert advice at your side. For a free 15-minute call, contact us today at 513-563-PLAN (7526) or book online.

Regards,
Nikki Earley, CFP®