S. Worthen | Weblog

I think there is a difference between a beautiful turn of phrase and what some people consider their darlings. There is nothing wrong with carving an image out of text, nor with saving a beloved phrase - i have a few "outtakes" that i like well enough to keep - and will perhaps one day use. As you said, does the chandelier fit or is it something that stands out.

I often think that the "darlings" stand out. We love them, feel clever, and hold them too tightly. A friend mentioned to me that sometimes the phrases i loved the most sound like me... certainly a problem. If i notice these beloved phrases as I read the work aloud then I know there is a problem.

We all look for those beautiful phrases, but when a work is full of them, or they carve a beautiful image, they don't stand out so much. I have of recent been re-reading a particular author, paying close attention to the construction of description (sentence length, placement and structure).

I was quite stunned at the brilliance of the work, a slow build up of beautiful phrases in a work that might not normally be known for it. The images stand out in my mind more than the words, yet if i wrote them i might be tempted to call several "darlings".

Here is an excerpt:

He flew to Mexico.

And woke to the rattle of steel buckets on tile, wet swish of brooms, a woman's body warm against his own.

The room was a tall cave. Bare white plaster reflected sound with too much clarity; somewhere beyond the clatter of the maids in the morning courtyard was the pounding of surf. The sheets bunched between his fingers were coarse chambray, softened by countless washings.

He remembered sunlight through a broad expanse of tinted window. An airport bar, Puerto Vallarta. He'd had to walk twenty meters from the plane, eyes screwed shut against the sun. He remembered a dead bat pressed flat as a dry leaf on runway concrete.
(snip!)

The woman beside him stirred in her sleep.

He raised himself on one elbow to look at her A stranger's face, but not the one his life in hotels had taught him to expect. He would have expected a routine beauty, bred out of cheap elective surgery and the relentless Darwinism of fashion, an archetype cooked down from the major media faces of the previous five years.

Something Midwestern in the bone of the jaw, archaic and
American...


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I don't edit as i write - though sometimes when i flip back in WIPs something will get added or subtracted - minor edits. If i were to edit as I write - i would never finish. :)

I also have noticed, personally, that the more i write the less i hang onto the work. I am less attatched to it.