When it comes to editing, I think sometimes the most painful decisions involve cutting. You’ve worked on a scene and perfected it…only to find that in the overall structure of the story your perfect scene is perfectly irrelevent…
I only bring this up because I just had to do that with a scene I worked on for a story I’ve written entitled Snake Oil. It’s a short story that topped out at 5,500 words. Unfortunately, the places that I’ve looked to send it for publication want everything under 5,000 words. There was a specific scene, however, that I knew could go, and it was just over 600 words long.
It was a tough decision because I like the scene, but on the other hand the story works perfectly fine without it. And while I lose two sentences that I thought were extremely well written, the benefits to losing this material is better than keeping it. It got to the point where I just couldn’t justify keeping it, especially in lieu of the fact that the publications I’m sending it to have word length restrictions.
Oh well. This is the way things go sometimes. And it’s better as a writer to be able to let go of a scene than to hold on to it and ruin your chances.
