Murder Your Darlings!

About a month ago I completed the first draft of a novel which I wrote in under five weeks. It was a tough endeavor and a great exercise in self-discipline. The process consisted of exposing my very heart and soul as I tapped busily away at my keyboard for five to eight hours a day.
Hemingway is supposed to have said that writing a novel is not hard, that all you have to do is sit down at a typewriter and cut open a vein. I did just that.

But I was mortified when informed by an expert that my protagonist was not someone readers could easily identify with. Granted he only read two chapters, but I guess that would be more than enough to turn people away. There are other books out there after all, ones with characters that grab the reader from the very beginning.
This was my first hard knock as a would-be author. It took tremendous effort to drag myself back up and get down to writing some more, tempting as it was to slit my throat and flood the keyboard in a sea of literary blood.
You have to write for others as well as for yourself, I have learned. That is if you ever want to get published and stay published. In hindsight it is obvious to me that I was writing more about myself rather than for myself, but the point struck home nevertheless. The salt poured liberally on the wound was the very fact that this protagonist was a reflection of an aspect of my self.

Could the great Hemingway be wrong?
I don't think so. I may have cut too deep into that vein and almost bled to death, drowning any reader in the process. Maybe a smaller, more delicate cut would suffice. I should have mixed in a dash of humor and a liberal sprinkling of good characteristics to counteract the negative earlier on in the book. It is fiction after all!

But I did not leave this little episode empty handed. I now realize that I was very attached to that first piece of work and couldn't let it go, despite huge and obvious structure flaws that I knew were there but chose to ignore. Somebody had to tell me; take me off gently to the side and beg, "please, no more'. Any person reading my work who was on the brink of suicide or in the throes of deep depression would have been pushed forcibly over the edge to their inevitable demise.

I have read Stephen King's book 'On Writing' several times and highly recommend it, not only to prospective writers but anyone who enjoys a good read. One thing he says has stuck with me. "Anything goes, it's all on the table, up for grabs" and he adds "if it works, fine. If it doesn't, toss it. Toss it even if you love it." He goes on to quote Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch who once said "Murder your Darlings" and so I did.
I killed my creation and it felt good to let it go. It now sits on the shelf awaiting maybe one day in the future, a resurrection. But in the meantime, as my new mentor suggested, I have started writing another novel, this time in the genre that I love. I am liberated after my first attempt, which was not altogether a failure since it taught me the discipline of actually sitting down to write in earnest. It was good practice in many ways.

I have read a few books on this business of writing and almost every one has emphasized that to be a successful writer one has to write a lot and read a lot. I've always been an avid reader, going through maybe two or three books a week. Now I'm fulfilling the other requirement and becoming a prolific writer.
I'm finding writing can be a lonely and frustrating undertaking but also a wonderful experience and exploration of self - it's amazing what lies dormant in one's imagination just waiting for a chance to come out! Now, I'd better stop talking about it and actually get down to writing my novel. Where's my razor blade.....