Killed Darlings #2

Rejected passages cut from the first draft of my upcoming memoir

The Cut

I started writing my memoir in 2016. I finished the first draft in 2022. Since that first draft, I’ve revised, revised, revised until the current version took shape.

And I’m pretty sure the current version isn’t going to be last draft, either.

But in the very beginning, I wasn’t sure what direction I was going to take my memoir. I had a pretty good idea of the story I wanted to tell, but what was and wasn’t important to include was completely elusive. So I wrote everything.

Some of the scenes and stories told in the earliest draft were near and dear to my heart, but I had to cut them for the sake of clarity, brevity, or arc.

I have, as we are often advised to do as writers, killed my darlings.

The darling you will read below was one of the earliest scenes from my very first draft.