When I was still a young pup, I was asked to write a draft of an incredibly important newspaper ad. It was to explain to the American public the historic breakup of the phone company, AT&T, into eight different companies. This pivotal moment would end a century of monopoly and change American technology overnight.

I pounded away at my Selectric® for days, dog-eared thesaurus at my side then dumped reams and reams of copy on my boss's desk. He looked over his reading glasses at me, sighed, then took out a red grease pencil and started to slash at my masterpiece.

When he handed it back, gutted and bloody, I was appalled.

How could he cut this phrase, that simile, these seven paragraphs of blinding brilliance?

It didn't matter that this was one of the most important ads of the decade, that it would take up multiple pages in every newspaper in the country, that the client's very existence was on the operating table.

Every word I'd written was perfect, pure poetry, immutable. My boss was clearly a Philistine!

I glared at him in resentful silence.

"Let's go to lunch," the boor said, putting on his jacket. (In those days, people still went out for business lunches).

"My friend," he said over his first martini, "If you're going to make it as a writer, you've got to learn to murder your darlings. You can't change minds with shovels-full of perfumed horseshit. You wrote a lot of pretty phrases, cranked out a lot of gorgeous ten-dollar words, but in the end, you've got to sacrifice them all to get your point across. Writing isn't nearly as hard as they say. But rewriting is murder."

​

By the time the big ad ran, it was unrecognizable. All my clever turns of phrases had been pruned, my self-indulgences excised, my bloated carcass trimmed down by hundreds of words — but, oh, the agony of sacrificing so much genius on the altar of alteration.

It was a lesson I'd have to learn again and again.

I loved to spew out endless copy, to present baroque campaigns with 30 commercials or more. I loved writing 60- and even 90-second TV spots. Epic series. Gatefold inserts. Books! — when a single, pithy phrase would suffice. Then I would fall on my sword for beautiful pieces of film that did nothing to advance the plot or the client's objectives. So pretty! So cool! So dead.

Year after year, I had to sharpen the knife and murder my darlings once more.

To let the moment of exhilaration at my blazing cleverness pass, then log hours of crumpling paper and shuffling words till just the right ones clicked perfectly into place. Not a spare syllable, not an ounce of fat could survive.

It was excruciating. But it had to be done.

Whether you're writing ads or operas, designing apps or developing recipes, creativity requires destruction, refinement, survival only of the fittest.

Murder your darlings and climb high on their bones!

Your pal,

Danny

P. S. As you may have noticed, today's essay arrived late. When I explain the circumstances of its construction, I've little doubt you'll forgive me. Typically, I adhere rigorously to a specific writing routine. A large number of my oldest friends and new acquaintances arrive at the studio in the later evening hours each Thursday (or ‘Little Friday’ as we like to call it). They usually include a clown troupe from Albuquerque, identical Apache cousins from the rez, a microneurosurgeon from the Broderick Clinic, my fencing instructor, a one-eyed ironmonger, an Argentine taxidermist named Otto, and my bookie with the rapier wit. We pull long tables of rough-hewn planks into the courtyard and light long amber tallows set in antler candelabra. As I stroke my beard and consider my topic, someone will usually pulls out a balalaika, a zither or two, a Theremin, a washboard, and get down to some of the old songs. While I peck at my Smith-Corona, the company crunches crusty loaves slathered in aged gorgonzola, glugs down earthenware jugs of retina, and pulls on slim, dark cigars hand-rolled by a dear pal in Manila. When the rosy fingers of dawn creep over the tower of the Biltmore School, I type my final revision and hit ‘send’ then celebrate with heaping bowls of overnight oats and calisthenics. However this week, I deviated from my routine and failed you. To be honest, we were sidetracked by the ever-gripping Winter Olympics, distracted by the live broadcast of the snowshoe torchlight relay and the finals of the scimitar toss. I can only hope that you also stayed up late for that drawn-out final quarter of the freestyle ice sculpting match and can understand when I report that I woke up this morning on the stone tiles, head pounding from too much ouzo and paprika, and realized that, for the first time ever, I had passed out before hitting ‘send.’ I’ll hit it now, then wait, breath bated, to see if you unsubscribe in disgust.