Abort Your Literary Babies

The Rule: Every good sentence, paragraph and chapter that is written is a keeper.

Writers want to preserve their fine tuned sentences, well crafted paragraphs and protect their cherished chapter. If it's witty, sounds beautiful, shows great insight to the story, and character, they try to keep it close to them like an over bearing mother, even if it isn't working in the piece. In fact, writers will contort the rest of the surrounding writing, so it would fit with the little gem that popped out of their mind and made their way to paper.

For example, one of your characters is generally a nice guy, but as you were writing his dialogue you thought of this extremely malicious and hilarious thing for him to say. You keep it because it is witty and it manifested to your mind at the moment you were writing the dialogue.

It is almost as if we think that Muse is some actual spiritual-being throwing the perfect amount of inspiration at us as she sees fit.

Do you know what happens with overbearing parents? The children rebel, and run away from the parent's values. If a writer is too overbearing, the writing will lose the very heart and soul of the piece you are writing, and form a mind of its own.

If these literary children cause your work to fail, please be kind to yourself and abort them. It's okay. No one is going to picket around your writing station yelling obscenities at you, and the regret you may feel will last on a few moments. The Christian church is all about preservation of individual life, but as a writer, you have to think on a larger scale. In fact, you could keep your useless, yet wonderful children in a cryogenic state for stem cell research (another document). You can always use those sentences for future writing.

Just remember, writers don't write, they rewrite, and that means the death of something you may love. In the end, you will have something far more precious and wonderful- a published work of art.