Tuesday's Inspiration ala Colette by Janet Lane Walters

"Put down everything that comes into your head and then you're a writer. But an author is one who can judge his own stuff's worth, without pity and destroy most of it." Colette

I don't know about you but this quote really struck me. Have I destroyed scened and even chapters in a work in progress? There have been many times when this has been done while I'm writing. Sometimes a story takes a turn that leads to a dead end and I know I have to go back and find the place where those words I put down have to go. Does this hurt? You bet it does. I used to call this slash and burn but that was in the days of typewriters and carbon paper. Now there's the cut function. This is frequently used at least in the first one or two drafts of the story I'm working on.

There are times when I'm reading something written by someone else and I scratch my head because the scene doesn't fit the book. Just what does this mean? Perhaps this is one of those sections that should have been destroyed.

What Colette is saying here is don't be afraid to destroy words that you've written and replace them with ones that make the story sing. How about you? Do you often read what you've written and wonder why you wrote that scene, that paragraph, that description? Do you leave it or do you black out those words and press the cut button?