murder one's darlings

verb

Etymology

Possibly first used by Arthur Quiller-Couch (1863–1944) during a series of lectures at the University of Cambridge, later published in book form.

Definitions

  1. Alternative form of kill one's darlings.

    • Whenever you feel an impulse to perpetrate a piece of exceptionally fine writing, obey it — whole-heartedly — and delete it before sending your manuscript to press. Murder your darlings.

The neighborhood

Vish — recursive loop

No curated loop yet for murder one's darlings. Loops are being traced one word at a time while the ingestion pipeline matures.

sense glosses and etymology drawn from English Wiktionary · source · CC-BY-SA