At the second edit stage of my work, this is how I deal with the depressing ‘rule’: Kill your darlings.
I come to an expertly crafted sentence that makes me gasp with pride. Then I let a tiny whisper of doubt come forward. Does it truly fit the flow? Not really?
No need for murder by Delete. I cut out the wording and drop it into a document called ‘Beautiful Bits’. It’s safe there, corralled in its pen. I can lead it out to shine somewhere else, if I want.
No-one seems to know who first coined the phrase Kill your darlings, but there is an argument for the first reference having been made by Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch (1863–1944), in ‘Lectures Delivered in the University of Cambridge, 1913–1914’: On the Art of Writing – XII. On Style.
‘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 press. Murder your darlings.