Cutting

I spent most of this evening reworking a scene in my book. Fiddling around with a couple of key pieces of dialogue and trying to making them fit into the new flow of the story. And one after the other I deleted them. I think I kept about 300 words total of a 1,500 scene. I remember writing the original passage so clearly. I'd be trying for about a month to get Maya (my protagonist) out of her home town and to London. In my original conception of the book the scenes of Maya at her home were considerably shorter. But as I began to write the initial scenes grew, mutating, taking on a strange life of their own. Maya wanted, no needed, to spend more time at home.

My first pass at the scene in the club in London was awkward. There were a lot of things that I knew I needed to fix, but if fit the book as I had it originally conceived. Having finished the first draft my understanding particular of the characters, and the underlying themes has deepened. Even knowing this I still approached the editing of this scene thinking that I would integrate some key changed plot points, and polish some of the dialogue. I didn't intend to cut it all. But once I started I could see the scene taking shape before me, as its true form had been hidden behind the extraneous words. Instead of feeling sad at all that work lost, I felt a sense of relief as I deleted each paragraph. I knew that I was doing what was right for the book