It's time for a divorce

[Terri]

No, I don't mean my marriage is breaking up, heck we just celebrated 15 years what would be the point? I mean I need to divorce my current work in progress....actually I just need to divorce a chapter...but I can't seem to make myself do it.

See, that's my problem. I'm so married to my words I can't make myself delete them all together. I have three "deleted scene" folders for this current work because when I'm writing I just let the words and scenes flow. But then when I go back and re-read (as I do often), I think, no, that's not where the story is supposed to go...but damn, that's good! then I cut and paste to the file. Most times I have two or three of the same scene written in different ways.

Yeah, I know....denial. But it's not as easy as you think. I'm a mediocre writer at best so when I write something that has me scratching my head in awe and thinking "who wrote that?" it's hard to get rid of the words. And this chapter in question is good and does all the things a chapter should do and works for the story and characters and tension....except.....it follows a chapter that needs more structure. But, adding more structure to the needed chapter may completely change the questionable chapter and make it unusable. Have I lost ya yet??

Of course even after griping about it I still won't completely delete the chapter in question, I'm so committed to the words I'll probably just do a trial separation and see if I can fit them in somewhere else.

[Shane Gericke]

Even better, Terri, take the stuff you don't like and put it in a separate file for future review. It's out of your way, but you can go back to it whenever you want and fish for the salvagable stuff. I do that all the time, and have used past bits that didn't work as foundations for new books and chapters.

[Tom Cain]

Kill your babies. Or to put it another way, never be afraid to dump the stuff that seemed so great when you first thought of it. I can't count the number of times that the line, or paragraph, or page or even chapter that got me into a piece of writing - whether it's an article, a script or a book - is the thing I realise down the line that I'm just going to have to cut. And that's when you just have to have the courage to dump it .. because by then you've got going and thought of something better. So your first attempt served its purpose ... and now it's gotta go.

Harsh, I know, but it works ...

[Terri]

I've been trying to do that, but I still can't find my happy medium. *sigh* Sometimes I'm just too obsessive compulsive.
;-)

[Steven Torres]

Why not leave the chapter as it is and fix the one you know needs fixing first?