Why "Killing My Darlings"
And why it's important right now.
Why Killing My Darlings
Writers have been told for more than a century to “kill their darlings.” It’s advice about editing: cut the precious lines you love if they don’t serve the work. Brutal, but freeing.
Apparently, the phrase goes back to Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch in 1916, later repeated by William Faulkner, and you’ll also see it attributed to Stephen King: “Kill your darlings, even when it breaks your egocentric little scribbler’s heart.” Over time it’s become both cliché and hard #truth.
I chose Killing My Darlings as the name of this Substack because being a writer today is not just about writing. It’s about habits, attachments, even the rituals we convince ourselves we need. For example: I love my index cards. I love scribbling scenes and pinning them to a wall. But lately I catch myself wondering if they still serve me, or am I just attached to the physicality of them and the tactile sensation? Am I in love with the cards themselves, rather than the story they’re supposed to help me tell?
That question has only grown louder with the arrival of AI. Suddenly, the writing process itself is shifting. What does writing even look like in the future? Do I still spend days with cards and thumbtacks, or do I let an AI spill out dozens of variations in minutes and sift through them?
Does holding onto the old process make me better, or does it just make me more comfortable?
“Killing my darlings” now means asking harder questions:
Which habits still move the work forward, and which are just nostalgia?
If AI generates a draft, and I cut it down into something good, is that any different than if I’d drafted it myself?
Does it matter who wrote the bad version — me or a machine — if the good version only emerged because it existed?
I don’t know all the answers yet. That’s why I’m here. I’m a writer who is also building AI software for writers, filmmakers, and other creatives.
This Substack is my lab for exploring what happens when human creativity and machine assistance collide and/or collaborate. I’ll be writing about writing, AI, storytelling, and the messy business of deciding what’s worth keeping.
Some darlings will live. Some will die.
If you’re curious about the intersection of human voice and machine output, and you are down to explore ritual vs reinvention, hit subscribe and let’s figure it out together.