It’s an old saying in writing circles, kill your darlings. The instruction is
not to commit filicide – thank goodness, because there are writers out there
who would seem prepared to do anything
for a bestseller – no, it means cut out the best bits of your writing.
Whenever
you think your prose has hit the most wondrous heights – delete it. The reason
that’s usually given for this is that if you love those words so much, then you have lost
a sense of objectivity and that’s dangerous. If all that fabulous language
isn’t moving the story along efficiently, then it’s got to go whether you love
it or not. It can’t just sit there looking pretty. Unless you're Zadie Smith.
The phrase is usually ascribed to William Faulkner and an earlier version - murder your
darlings - originated from a lecture at Cambridge University given by Sir
Arthur Quiller-Couch. ‘Whenever you feel an impulse to perpetrate a piece of
exceptionally fine writing, obey it – wholeheartedly – and delete it before
sending your manuscript to press. Murder your darlings.’
I recently had cause to murder a real darling
in the final rewrite of my new novel Powder Burn. Originally it contained
several viewpoint characters, but in this last go-around I’d decided to strip
it back to just two. One of the consequences was that my favourite scene in the
entire book had to go, because it was written from one of the deleted points of
view – oh, the weeping, wailing and gnashing of teeth...
Anyway, I couldn’t let it die completely, and here
it is... but reading it again a couple of weeks after the act, I’m glad I did it. It was written for the book’s original audience of snowboarders and
mountain folk. I’m hoping that the final version of Powder Burn will reach a
wider audience, and this scene might have driven them away.
The set-up is that a character called Vegas has
climbed a mountain in the Himalayas to attempt to be the first person to ride a
snowboard back down it. By the time he’s got close to the top and into position
for the descent he’s not in good shape, exhausted and with the stirrings of
altitude sickness. Will he climb back down, or ride to his destiny? And what
will that destiny be?
He knew what he was
there to do after the months of planning and preparation. He must climb and
ride. And nothing, not even the bowel snake of fear, was going to stop him.
This was his last chance, and every cell of his body knew it. He moved over to
the edge and started looking for a place to get down into the chute as he
ascended those last few yards. He dragged himself upwards until the cornice on
top of the main ridge began to tower over him. He couldn’t go any further, and
there was no easy step down, at least none that he could see. But it was only a
couple of yards and so without really thinking about it he jumped. He landed
flat on his back, and sank into the snow.
Given the steepness of the slope he had jumped onto, it now occurred to
him that he was lucky that he hadn’t hit a hard crust. Otherwise, he might well
have started the first descent of Powder Burn on his ass. He lay there for a
long while, the sun giving the illusory impression of warmth, while he
struggled again for breath. It would have been easy to fall asleep. Just to slip
away, rest his weary body. But eventually, he remembered that he was there for a
reason and he sat up. He wrestled to get the pack off his back, but the snowboard
was strapped to it and the tail had dug deep into the snow. He couldn’t work
out why he couldn’t drag the pack round in front of him. He floundered, digging
a deep hole until finally he got his arms out of the straps and rolled clear.
He stared at it for a while, anger subsiding. Then he fiddled with the
strap buckle that was holding the board onto the pack, but it wouldn’t set at
the angle for quick release. He pulled a mitten off and tried again, then
fumbled until he found a way of pushing the strap back through the buckle an
inch at a time. After what seemed like an eternity of effort the board was
loose. He set the edge into the snow so the board sat perpendicular to the
slope and kicked his feet into the bindings. The hard plastic straps were
easier to deal with, and he got them ratcheted up tight with relative ease. He
was ready. What about the headcam on his helmet? There was a switch. He wasn’t
taking his mittens off again. He reached up and fumbled, fingers thick through
the cloth and cold. It felt like he got it. Whatever.
He stared down the chute. The walls seemed to be getting closer together,
moving in on him like some giant car crusher. His breath rasped in the neoprene
face mask. The backpack - he turned and found it lying behind him. The ice axes
were still strapped to the outside. He’d forgotten those as well. The quick
release buckles chose to work. He stuffed the axes handle-first into the snow
and struggled into the backpack straps, then looped the axe leashes around his
wrists. He adjusted the goggles, pushed at the face mask. Then there really was
nothing else to do. He had to go.
He stood up, and immediately the board started to slide sideways down
the mountain under the extra weight. He was pushing a gathering wall of snow in
front of him and already gaining speed, reeling at how steeply the slope fell
away beneath him. It crossed his mind that he could just cruise down like this.
Then he remembered Lens and the camera, and a switch clicked in his brain. He
had never stepped back, never bottled a drop or a jump or a run. He flicked his
hips and his board pointed straight down the slope.
The acceleration was a familiar sensation, and the trained responses
kicked in from thousands of hours of riding. But never before had he dealt with
this much gravity, at this altitude. The adrenaline rush flushed through him
with the avalanche of raw sensation, of clumsy response. Of nerves and muscles
doing whatever they could to keep him upright and pointing down the hill.
Somewhere, there was a voice saying - put in a turn and slow it down, this is
the limit of control. But the chute walls were a fuzzy black blur and with the
tunnel narrowing and quickening and flashing past on either side with
terrifying closeness, the fear of blowing the turn and hitting the wall rose
like bile and drowned even that shred of conscious decision making. It was all he
could do to control and respond to the board, the snow. The froth of fear and
reaction pushed the voice of experience under for the last time.
Then he fired out of the bottom of the chute and the run didn’t look so
threatening. It was wider and the wall on the left hand side had disappeared.
It didn’t matter that riding over the cliff was just as fatal an error as
slamming into the rock – he felt the psychological pressure of making the first
turn ease. He gently put some pressure onto his toes to push into a turn away
from the wall. He was on perfect snow and the board – yabbering and hammering
at his legs - responded. Now it flashed through him. He realised what was
beyond the edge ahead. He didn’t panic. He just pushed a little too hard
instead of rolling into another turn. Even then, it was far from disastrous.
The board was hitting the snow with too much angle and too much speed. But it
could have just bitten deeper into soft snow, slamming into a huge,
thigh-jellying power slide that if controlled, would, if nothing else, have
finally slowed him down.
But some confluence of snow type, temperature, humidity, wind, and
geography ensured that his board dug only so far into the snow before it hit a
layer of ice. The edge started to skid along the top of this harder surface, while the snow above it let go of its frail grip - just as it would in an
avalanche. For all the resistance it provided at this critical moment, it might
as well have been on roller bearings. He felt nothing more than the sudden rush
of acceleration and a moment later, along with a couple of hundred pounds of
snow, he flew off the edge of the mountain and out into space. He was falling,
spinning in a whirl of powder, unable at first to comprehend what had happened.
But he had a long way to go. Time to realise that he was all done. That there
was nothing left to hope for, save a miracle landing. And perhaps more
realistically - that it wouldn’t hurt. There was a feeble blip of anger at his
error, then resignation. No screaming, no histrionics, becalmed in utter
helplessness, then nothing.
