Kill your darlings...

... But what if I don't want to?

So for those not aware, I take writing classes and have been doing so since late August 2013. I have known since the very beginning of the course that I would have to write a short story, which would get published along with everyone else's from the writing classes in a short story collection. Now... This is cool. Infact, I am really excited! By Spring I will be a "published"-ish author. But there is one problem... short stories is not my specialty... 

It's not that I don't like writing them, trust me I do, but whenever I do write one I am really proud of it.

Especially the one I have written for the short story collection. It has a very simple plot, but then again it is very mysterious and I love that. Not a lot happens, and that is okay. Or so I thought. 

Apparently it doesn't quiet fit under the theme that my writing teacher gave my class... She loves my story, but says that not enough happens in it.

So here I sit. I have rewritten it, but I am just not happy with the new result. I think it is stupid, and sounds really unnatural and I have to say... I am a bit disgusted by the language. I can usually write really well, but when I am forced to write a way that will make other people happy that talent falls flat.

My teacher told me to "kill my darlings", but I don't think she understands how hard that is to do in a short story... whenever I write a novel I cut away like a crazy person! In my current novel I think I have cut away maybe... 20k words? SO FAR. And I am actually scared that my 103k first draft will become less than 50k words... so as you can see I can easily kill my darlings. But those are the darlings, that I just used as filling. With this short story I really poured my heart into it and made it as perfect as possible, but because it doesn't fit the theme, I had to change almost everything...

That hurts...

I don't know about you guys, but I will:

Keep Calm and Write On.

- Nanna.