Dear Geist,

Once you realize that you have to kill your darlings, as a famous writer once said, when exactly is it time to kill the darlings, and how can the writer be sure they are killing the darlings and not something else?

—Carollie Pouley, Niagara Falls ON

Dear Carollie,

In a written piece that has been paid for, edited, checked, signed off, sent to production and bound as finished books, many a writer still has doubts about whether it’s ready—including questions of darlings that need to be sent packing. The long-ago writer who first declared the unmasking and striking down of darlings (Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch, or Oscar Wilde, or one of many others) offered a useful warning: Do not fall so completely in love with your own material that you leave it in, even when the professional writer in you knows better. That mistake may be a particularly groovy turn of phrase, all wrong for the piece even if beloved by you. Or it may be a cool subplot that hasn’t fit in the story for months, but is still your fave. Or an endless sentimental explanation of what is already there on the page—a common error that calls to mind another watchword: If you have a message, send a telegram.

To identify the darlings, first set the whole work aside for a month, or at least a few weeks. Then bring it out and read it again, stem to stern. This may resolve your questions. Or, if you have an editor or publisher who will read the manuscript in its entirety, great. Listen to everything they say, as if the advice were being given to someone else.

Whether or not you include the passages that may be darlings, make sure to keep a copy of them in your own papers. Nothing bad will happen, and you’ll still have all the bits you need to change your mind, or use the material in another project.

—The Editors