Beware illusions of value…

The other day I tweeted a little line about the importance of not being afraid to get rid of that one PRECIOUS OH MY PRECIOUS thing in your novel. Sort of in the same vein as “kill your darlings”, but way more apocalyptic. Because the “precious” I’m thinking of, the “precious” we sometimes have to throw into the fires of Mount Doom, requires not just a wee tweak in the revision process, but instead a major rewrite.

Listen, I just spent the last couple months all hung up on what had been a majo...