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My favorite journalism professor instructed me to “kill your darlings.” The phrase has been attributed to Faulkner, but the origin isn’t really known. At the time, it applied strictly to my writing. That sentence you just wrote and think is amazing? Get ready to delete it. The part of your piece you’re most attached to? It probably needs to go. It means being willing to let go of what you believe is brilliant for the sake of the message as a whole. Sometimes those darlings end up detracting instead of enhancing.
Also, sometimes what we love most isn’t actually good. As writers or artists or musicians, that can be difficult to see. Once I started photography, I began applying the “kill your darlings” philosophy to my photo work as well. As creatives we tend to think something is wonderful simply because we created it. I become emotionally attached to my images when I’ve connected with my clients or especially, if the subjects are my kids or family members. Often I’ll ask my husband to look through a gallery and have him tell me which images are the strongest. Usually they’re different than the ones I thought I had to keep. Sometimes I keep my darlings anyway…Shhh.
But, we need to be willing to abandon our darlings when they’re not needed to complete a collection or they don’t add to the final aesthetic or story – or if we’re really honest with ourselves and they’re just not as good as we originally thought they were. If we can continually self-critique, our work will continually improve.
So next time you find yourself too attached to an image or thinking all 200 photos from a session are darlings, go ahead and kill a few.
