the Empathy List #145: Cut, Paste, and Kill Your Darlings

Revision is the real-est creative work.

Hello friend, Liz here.

Today we’re talking about the hard work of creative revision.

The 3rd episode of Knock at the Sky: A Creative Journey is live, and you can listen in your podcast app of choice.

Jeremy and I are talking about molding the final form of your artistic project: cut, paste, curate, and kill your darlings. As Queen Annie says, “The path is not the work.” (The Writing Life, Dillard)

To create art, and not just catharsis, you must curate. And the creative process provides many opportunities to do this individually—the self-edit—and in collaboration—with editors, curators, creative collaborators, and peer colleagues. But how do you decide whose voice to trust and whose to discard? Whose voice matters most? And how do you discover the true heart of the work? And how do you stay sane when your WIFE becomes the curator of your work? (We’ll tell you how that went.)

We’re also finally talking one of Liz’s favorite topics: audience! How do you keep the readers and viewers of your…