KIERAN SHEA: You Must Kill Your Darlings

BIO

KIERAN SHEA’s fiction has appeared in dozens of venues including Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, Thuglit, Dogmatika, Word Riot, Plots with Guns, Beat to a Pulp, Crimefactory, and Needle: A Magazine of Noir ...as well as in some beefy-looking anthologies most of which will make you question the tether of his shiny, red balloon. To his self-deprecating astonishment he's also been nominated for the Story South’s Million Writers Award twice without sending the judges so much as a thank you note. He co-edited the satiric transgressive fiction collection D*CKED: DARK FICTION INSPIRED BY DICK CHENEY and his debut novel KOKO TAKES A HOLIDAY is out now from Titan Books. Kieran divides his time between 38°58′22.6″N- 76°30′4.17″W and 39.2775° N, 74.5750° W.

6/7/11

You Must Kill Your Darlings

Okay. I'm stuck. Anybody want to chime in with some advice, I'm all ears here. Doing this 50K re-write and now realizing that the opening salvo, the one I thought was so clever and jarring isn't working at all. Someone once said that to write you have to be ready and willing to kill your darlings. Well, I'm there, people, staring at a deadline of my own making...looking for way to make it work...close to accepting the fact that I'm going to cut large and kill a lot of little darlings. Awful feeling. It's like the fuse to the fireworks show has been doused in water. Maybe if I stare long and hard at it. Maybe if I sleep on it. Maybe, maybe, maybe. Maybe it's all just a load of crap.