Also, I think his reverse “Murder Your Darlings” advice (“Save Your Darlings”?) is mostly meant for the more experienced writer, and possibly tongue-in-cheek.

The “Murder Your Darlings” he refers to — I think — is the James Patrick Kelly piece here: http://www.sfwa.org/writing/murder.htm . In it, Kelly advices on how to cut extraneous material, the darlings being the unnecessary prose the writer is in love with.

Which is great advice for beginning writers: discard the chaff, keep the wheat.

Nick now seems to say — possibly deadpan — that once in every while you should keep that beautiful piece of prose that is superfluous in that particular story instead of weeding it out. Hence, throw away the story and keep the single gem, and expand the gem into a *new* story.

To be able to do this successfully, you need to know when that piece of prose you love so much is really a gem or not. Meaning experience comes in very handy at that time. As in knowing the rules very well before you break them.

Nick does it, but keep in mind that we only see the stories in which this technique *worked*, not the ones where it failed (because the writer either ditched these, or they were never accepted).

The Bacigalupi sex change experiment is really interesting (the others I found rather self-evident, but this is with 20/20 hindsight).

BTW, as a co-contributor you might have seen my slushpile advice in the latest Focus…;-)