Welcome to another installment of Romance Writers Weekly! Our hop this week comes courtesy of author extraordinaire, Carrie Elks. “Stephen King famously said that it’s necessary to ‘kill your darlings’ when editing your work. Do you have anything you had to remove from a book that you’re still proud of? Or something that embarrasses you so much it will never again see the light of day? If you’re feeling really brave, share some of it with us!”

Hopefully you’ve found your way here from Jenna E. Mann, author of Drift and the Felony Romance Series. Has she ever killed her darlings? My guess is yes, and in only the best way. It’s funny that Carrie asked this particular question. I’ve just come through my first bona fide round of ‘kill your darlings’ in my upcoming release, Calum Me Maybe.

As with many authors, my writing style is to let my characters guide me where they want to go. It’s called being a “pantser”, as opposed to a “plotter”. I set the scenes and let my characters walk and talk their way through them. Most of the time, they play along nicely. Other times, my characters and I don’t end up on the same page (pardon the pun).

Duff got a bit too dark.

In Calum Me Maybe, Duff (my hero) gets into a really tight situation. When I started writing the book, I was in a tough situation myself. It was nothing even close to what Duff goes through – trust me 🙂 – but Duff’s thoughts and actions became way darker than I’d intended. The entire novella went in a direction that I never intended it to go. And while I still feel like the words were some of the best I’d ever written, I had to cut them out. Twenty thousand words, to be exact. Twenty. Thousand. For those of you who might not know the breakdown of word counts, pages, etc., The Calum was roughly thirty thousand words. So, yeah. I killed two-thirds of a book.

Here’s one passage that I’m still on the fence about:

Duff understood the cold. Had survived it.

Trapped in the ice, he’d known – even as his pulse slowed and his limbs deadened like felled, snow-laden branches – that the cold had offered him a perverse form of salvation. The cold had shut down his metabolism and reduced the machine of his body to its minimal capacity. Its only focus to conserve energy, retain heat, and stay alive.

Duff understood the cold, yes, and had survived it. But this absence of heat, the cold void left by Lovie’s departure, was shutting him down. There was no rescue coming. Not this time.

He laid in the dark listening to the thump-thump-thump of his heart and swore it was slowing. Thump-thump.

Stopping. Thump.

Dead.

His smartphone chimed, letting him know he’d received a text message. On the off-chance it was from her, Duff snatched it up, the LED screen blindingly bright as he brought it to his face.

Explain it to me. Tomorrow. 2pm at OCC. Don’t be late.

He quickly typed a response, I’ll be there.

There was so much more he wanted to say, but it would have to wait. Duff closed his eyes and listened intently, picturing Lovie’s soft smile. Her warm breath on his icy lips.

Seconds passed.

And then a single thump, so slight that it might have been the neighbours next door. He pressed his hands hard over his ears. Another faint thump, then another. Thump-thump.

He was reborn.

***

Kill it? Save it? We shall see. In the meantime, go check out Eden Ashe, author of the Dragon Lore Series, and get her take on the subject.

See you next time!