Once upon a time, when we were satisfied to drive Iraq out of Kuwait and you could still have a mullet without being a target of derision, I took a poetry class.

I wasn’t the best poet in the class. I did grab high marks for a poem that somehow merged a girl and a rusty Buick, but that was basically the high point of my poetic career. I remember the critique of that offering’s follow-up, which was probably more representative of my skills in verse at the time. It contained words like “sophomoric” and “obvious”. Usually, I’d take offense to something like that. In the case of my wannabe ode to whatever-it-was, I remember thinking only, “that’s true”. I could live with “sophomoric”. I was a sophomore, after all.

I did get something out of that one-night-a-week college class other than the merciful “A” grade. I learned a core editing principle. It’s a concept that I don’t always apply to my rambling informal blog posts, but it’s become part of my process as a copywriter.

My instructor, who was a damn good poet and actually knew more than a little bit about what he was teaching, emphasized cutting work down to its essence. He wanted us to clear out anything that was unnecessary. He showed me that a willingness to wield a sharpened Exacto knife and an ability to find the right word was the path to great poetry and, for that matter, to great writing.

Someone, maybe Faulkner or Twain, said that writers should be prepared to “kill their darlings”. The clever little trick that’s too cute needs to go, no matter how fond of it you may be. That rhetorical flourish in place of concise exposition? Shoot it dead.

It’s easy to impress ourselves with those little stunts, regardless of just how many “ughs” they produce from readers. The only remedy is a willingness to kill the textual darlings.

Yesterday, I was finishing some copy. It included an attempt to turn an old idiom on its head in a funny way. In my mind, the idea was gold. On paper (or in this case, on the monitor), it seemed forced. It looked like I was trying too hard. It was distracting. It had a gendered language problem, too, but that’s a whole different story.

Anyway, it was pretty obvious to me that it was time for me to pull out a gun.

I cheated. I left it in there. I sent a note to my partner on the project, mentioning its inclusion and the fact that I had some reservations about it.

The reply? “Yeah, that’s gotta go’.

Had I been working solo, I would’ve killed it myself. I’m a well-trained killing machine, after all. It was sort of nice to let someone else wash the blood from the hands on this one, though. Not only did it save me from another kill, it also reinforced that my instincts were right.