Maybe don’t kill your darlings?

The phrase “kill your darlings” is a lifelong foe. I’ve never quite understood it, prevalent as the idea can be. I take the injunction to mean I should get rid of the best parts of what I’m working on: the lines I feel especially alive while rereading, the metaphors so bewitching it seems possible I, too, along with the language, might be transfigured.

I always took this phrase as “don’t be afraid to edit out something that you love.”

You sacrifice a passage that you love for the betterment of the whole piece.

But I resist this too.

For even if I don’t like something here or there, someone else might.

In fact, I often turn discarded ideas into short blog posts and then press on with something else.

Done and done.

Such a good and simple tip I read here from yen.fm.

I mean, think about it.

99% of the advice out there on SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is about how to tweak this, how to optimize that.

They tell you that this one WordPress plugin is imperative, how your title needs to be arranged, and the best link structure, etc.

But here it is:

To get good SEO results, you have to have content to rank.

I know, crazy thought, right?!

But – all things equal – which would you rather have?

Perfectly optimized and tweaked content with 100 posts or real talk from a real person to the tune of 10,000 posts?

While you are reading another technical post on SEO – and fretting about what to do – someone else has published three more times.

Get it?

Click the publish button.

Reminds me of the biggest secret of the internet.