The Editor's Blue Pencil: On the Discipline of Controlled Forgetting
There is a piece of received wisdom so deeply embedded in the craft of writing that it’s rarely questioned, only echoed. It’s the mantra of "murder your darlings," often attributed to Faulkner or King or a dozen other literary giants. It sounds brutal, decisive, and profoundly writerly. But I’ve come to believe it’s a flawed, even cruel, instruction. It advocates for an act of violence against one’s own creation, framing the necessary work of editing as a form of execution. What if, instead of murder, we practiced a different discipline altogether? The discipline of controlled forgetting.
The problem with "murdering your darlings" is its emotional charge. It casts the writer in the role of a ruthless executioner, tasked with identifying the most beloved, clever, or beautiful parts of their work and then coldly eliminating them. This creates a psychological hurdle that can paralyze the editing process. That elegant turn of phrase, that charming anecdote, that poignant description you labored over—they become not just parts of the text, but treasured possessions. The idea of murdering them feels like a betrayal of the creative spark itself. It turns editing into a guilt-ridden act of self-mutilation.
Controlled forgetting offers a gentler, more effective metaphor. Think of a historian sorting through archives. They don’t destroy documents with a shredder out of spite. Instead, they carefully set aside those pages that, while interesting or well-written, do not serve the specific narrative they are trying to build. The information isn’t erased from existence; it is merely deemed non-essential for the current purpose. It is forgotten by this particular story, allowed to recede into the background, perhaps to be rediscovered for a different project, a different purpose.
This shift in mindset frees you to see your work as an editor, not an assassin. That darling paragraph isn’t a prisoner to be marched to the gallows. It is a piece of raw material that, upon sober reflection, isn’t part of the final construction. You aren’t killing it; you are simply choosing not to use it right now. This changes the emotional calculus from one of loss to one of curation. You are not destroying something precious; you are refining the whole by focusing on what is necessary.
The blue pencil of the editor—a traditional tool for marking cuts—becomes an instrument not of death, but of deliberate selection. It says, "This is excellent, but it leads the reader down a side path we cannot afford to take." Or, "This insight is beautiful, but it belongs to the second book, not this one." The work is preserved in your notes, in a "cutting room floor" document. It is not murdered, but archived. It has not ceased to exist; it has merely been released from its duty to this specific piece.
Embracing controlled forgetting makes the editorial process more humane and sustainable. It acknowledges that creation is messy and generative, that we will always write more than is needed. Our darlings are not flaws to be viciously excised, but signs of a fertile imagination. The discipline lies not in the violence of the act, but in the wisdom to know what to set aside for the health of the whole. It is the quiet, confident art of deciding what the story must forget in order to be truly memorable.
Notes & further reading
A few pages I came back to while writing this: