Before You Murder Your Darlings, You Must Murder a Butterfly: Writing With Awareness, Forgiveness, and Discipline

By Natalie Afton Black Simpson

Imagine a large butterfly, flapping around your head. Its wings are a dazzling array of your favorite colors, its movement captivating. The soft, delicate slice of air from each flap of its wings makes you pause. You can’t look away from its enchanting path. 

It flies around next to you like it knows you're its creator, its source of life, its fate-giver. This creature is your prized possession, your saving grace, your triumph in life. You are convinced that this is the happiest you have ever been–a  joy in reserve only for this kind of moment: a moment that matters. A ravenous drive in you to act on it develops.   

You want to preserve this beauty- give this elusive, magical figure the definite shape and praise it deserves before it can fly away. There is a tension to it- you know your time together is brief unless you make it stay. The more you indulge and admire its beauty from below, the more sure you are that this friend of infinite worth is only here for a short time. Your need to make it stay becomes urgent and inescapable. Such majesty cannot get away. It just can’t! And so, you pluck it out of the air, and pin it to the flat, flat paper for all to see.  

Dead.

What’s left is a mere body, deranged and lifeless before you. All the color and movement- the stuff that made it beautiful- is gone. “This can’t be the same creature!” you may protest. “This looks nothing like my whimsical friend!” And yet, you can’t deny the horrifying corpse splayed before you–the thing that you killed with your own hand. 

This is the scenario described by author Ann Patchett as part of her writing process in her book, This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage. The butterfly is your beautiful, dazzling, enchanting idea that you alone made up– the greatest piece of literature the world has yet known. And you kill it, simply by trying to pin it down on the page. It’s brutal, it’s deadly, and oh so accurate to many of us writers. 

Before you start revisions, before you start sending it to your writing group, before you can even begin to think of “murdering your darlings,” you have to begin the unavoidable and ruthless process of pinning down your great butterfly- your greatest invention- onto the page. No matter how much you want to, you can’t escape having to start typing past the blink, blink, blink of your cursor. This can be the most paralyzing part of the writing process.

So, you have to commit the first crime. 

Luckily, you’re not the only one laden with this guilt! We are here as friends, the shared trauma from the sickness of what we have to do draws us together. The butterflies of our imagination may die, but we are the survivors. And there are things that we can do to better prepare and weather the storm that is sure to come. 

Awareness of the impending murder you will commit can help with the pain when it happens. It won’t be so jarring or devastating- instead, you will be prepared and expecting it, and you won’t let it stop you from continuing to write. It is a painful reality, but a necessary one to live. In this way, we have to be “willing to break our own hearts by trading in the living beauty of imagination for the stark disappointment of words,” as Ann Patchett says. 

This doesn’t mean the disappointment has to stay that way! Revision, practice, and time can lead you to the masterpiece that you are imagining. The gruesomeness of the project simply means that you can’t always expect your abilities to match your dreams right off the bat. In fact, it’s quite impossible to create that butterfly masterpiece you see, without first making your peace with killing it. 

Forgiveness is that crucial step onward. This is Ann Patchett’s secret to success  that she emphasizes heavily in her book. In fact, she swears by it, saying: “it is the key to making art, and very possibly, the key to finding any semblance of happiness in life.” If we kill the butterfly and then just walk away, what happiness can we hope for? Refocusing our energy by accepting the death of the butterfly as part of the process is freeing. And still having hope for the future- that is forgiveness to yourself in action. 

It is the most human of experiences to not be perfect, to grieve for a lack of your own abilities. Give yourself a space to accept that instead of jumping to impossible conclusions and unrealistic expectations. Grieve for the butterfly as you need, and then give it the respect and patience it deserves by moving forward.  

Discipline is another vital device in your toolbelt to employ when contemplating that dead butterfly. Like a miner giving up just before striking gold, you have a duty to continue, to keep writing despite the devastation of the crime. Many would-be Tolkien’s give up at this crossroads. Don’t let that be you! Trust the process. Move forward knowing that the best of the best had to practice too. Even the luckiest of people will run into the wall of their inadequacies. It is in that crucial moment that you get to decide how you will move forward. If you want to write, practice writing. A murdered note cannot stop the pianist from clocking in the necessary hours for improvement. As Ann Patchett says,, “Art stands on the shoulders of craft– which means that to get to the art, you must master the craft.” The more we practice with discipline, the closer we come to the art we seek.   

Now, I do acknowledge that the  murder of your butterfly may not feel like a murder at all to some (I’m thinking of Hamilton in the song “Non-stop” in the musical). Indeed, there may even be varying degrees to your perception of the slaughter, which I believe is still present every time, whether you acknowledge it or not. And for that, I commend you for your moments of pure talent and oblivious bliss! This is not to scare or deter any from trying to write. In fact, I am hoping for the opposite. Learning to write with awareness, forgiveness, and discipline can only yield fulfillment and personal success in its nature. 

So, come on writers! Steel your nerves. The opportunity to write, the thrilling possibility “to touch the hem of the gown that is art itself,” as Ann Patchett calls it, are not something to be passed up. Be confidently aware, freely forgiving, and harden your discipline. Your butterfly may be dead forever without such qualities in your practice. Continuing to write may be your only hope.