Author’s note: I recently attended a 7-day meditation retreat with Jhourney.

On the last day of retreat, I had a long – 6h or so – completely unscheduled block of time, the longest by far of the retreat. I was excited to meditate for most of it, to play with various techniques or listen to one or two guided tracks I hadn’t made it to yet.

I sat down for my first sit, and, within 30 minutes, it became clear that the thing my brain really, really, really wanted to do was to compose an entire goddamn essay on the famous piece of writing advice, “kill your darlings.” It had started doing so on a hike this morning, then gone mostly quiet, but during this sit it would. not. shut. up. about this essay.

My sits had been generally quite distraction-free over the week, so this was a quite unusual and somewhat confusing experience. I tried welcoming in that voice, I tried showing it some lovingkindness, I tried sitting quietly with it, I tried arguing with it, I tried arguing with it with loving kindness, I tried forgiving it, I tried every trick I had learned that week or had brought with me, and it just kept. composing. the essay.

So I stopped the sit, say down at a table, and wrote the entire goddamn essay, start to finish, in a very-close-to-final draft, longhand in my notebook. Then, I returned to meditating, and sat for more-or-less four hours straight with virtually no feelings of distraction, and only ~3 brief pauses about once an hour, to change posture or do a few minutes of walking meditation.

This is that essay.

The phrase “kill your darlings,” I find, sticks in my memory. It’s short and quippy, and just the right kind of shocking. I also have a sense that it’s entered the language and pops up again periodically, no doubt re-introducing it into my awareness. I think there’s a book or a movie of some note by that name?

I’m pretty sure, though – although I couldn’t be more specific off the top of my head – that it originates as a piece of writing advice, probably first uttered by some famous author.

I am, on occasion at least, a decent writer. Insofar as I am, though, it’s a very intuitive craft for me. I practice in the sense that I write a moderate amount (on my various blogs, but also at work and in personal contexts) and I make a point of writing, and stochastically get feedback for doing so. I do not, however, engage in “deliberate practice,” or work much specifically on the craft of writing. I don’t have an editor, I don’t do much seeking out and engaging with critique or feedback, I only rarely share early drafts, I’ve never taken a writing class, and so on. Probably I could be a better writer if I did, but that’s not my practice.

What I do have – and what I suspect all good writers must have, regardless of the rest of their practice – is two things.

First, I have a definite sense of “taste,” or an “ear” for what lands with me, or what doesn’t, be that at the level of an entire piece, or just a sentence or a paragraph, even if I can’t always explain why. And, second, I have an internal instinctive internal “voice” in my head that’s decent – far from perfect, but good enough – at producing text and ideas that the internal sense of taste likes.

Pick a topic. Generate some words on instinct. Review them listening for what “works” – for what lands, and what doesn’t, for that internal critic. Keep what works, try again with the parts that don’t. Repeat until the critic is satisfied (rare), until a deadline, or until you’re just so fed up with the process that you hit “publish.” That’s it, that’s nearly the entire craft of writing, at least as I practice it.

Sometimes, during this process, I land on a decision that I just fall in love with. Maybe it’s a quip that I find just hilarious, or an opening line, or a whole sentence, or something more abstract like a framing conceit for a piece. Sometimes I’m not even certain if it’s “good,” but it somehow grabs me. My inner critic just latches on. And I’ve learned to mostly trust that voice; it’s in precisely those choices and those moments that my own distinctive “voice” is formed. Also, writing can be a thankless, grueling task, and landing on something you just really love feels good, and I have to lean into those moments to keep up the practice.

But here’s the thing. Sometimes, later, one of those little decisions, one of the ones I’ve fallen in love with, stops working. Or maybe it never worked, but it’s only gradually become apparent. Maybe I’ve written more of the piece, and there’s just not actually anywhere it fits. Maybe it’s redundant with another paragraph, and that other paragraph does not quite spark joy in the same way, but fits infinitely better into the flow of the piece. Or I get repeated feedback that it’s not landing with readers, or even confusing them or leading them astray.

And sometimes, I can fix it. Rewrite something, move some paragraphs around, whatever.

But sometimes – perhaps more often, once you’ve noticed the pattern – the skillful move, for the sake of the entire piece, is to take that decision, the one you’ve fallen in love, with the one that your inner reader is clinging to, the one that feels like it is, in itself, why you write, and leave it on the cutting room floor.

I’m not sure I’ve ever actually looked up the original context of “kill your darlings,” or how it was originally meant. This move, though, is what it’s come to mean to me.

Almost by definition, it’s nearly the only move in the game of writing that I can’t do on instinct. The move where I have to pause, fall back to deliberative decision-making, and make a tough call. It doesn’t come up that frequently, but it can save a piece of writing when it does.