Novelist and Cambridge don Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch once offered the following advice to writers: “Whenever you feel an impulse to perpetrate a piece of exceptionally fine writing, obey it –- whole-heartedly -– and delete it before sending your manuscript to the press. Murder your darlings.” [Italics original.]

What Sir Arthur meant, I presume, is that good writing is like a proper English gentleman. It does not draw attention to itself. If it does, it causes the reader to focus on the writing, rather than on what the writer is trying to say.

As a writer myself, I know that. But, being a writer, I can’t help being seized from time to time with the impulse to perpetrate an exceptionally fine piece of writing. When I do, if I don’t have the good sense to delete it, I usually find that I have an editor or a client who will do it for me.

Once, I was asked to ghost a holiday season op/ed for General Colin Powell. Determined to produce a piece worthy of the client and the occasion, I labored doggedly over the opening sentence, re-writing it at least a dozen times before I finally arrived at this: “Each December, during the darkest and most desolate days of the year, we dauntless mortals do the incredible: We celebrate.”

That was the keynote. In the ensuing paragraph, I talked about how, during the month of December, we gather our friends and families around us and make merry. If we are Christians, we light Christmas trees; if we are Jewish, we light the menorah; if we are African American, we may light the seven candles of Kwanzaa. We banish the gloom by turning the darkest month of the year into a season of light.

I thought it was good piece overall, but I positively doted on that opening sentence. I loved the rhythm, the alliteration, and the flow. I marveled that I had produced something that good.

So, naturally, that sentence was the first thing to be drummed out of the op/ed by General Powell when he saw the draft. “It’s depressing,” he told me.

Well, I was used to the General’s edits, and he did like the rest of the piece, so this Christmas story had a happy ending. But it was a stern reminder of how right Quiller-Couch was in warning writers not to fall in love with their special effects.

Don’t fall in love with them. Murder your darlings. If you don’t, someone else will.