Progress Report, in which Darlings are Murdered

I know I'm a day early, but I wanted to go ahead and post. Overall, the first edit of the manuscript is moving along.

One particular scene bogged me down this weekend. This scene is redundant and I should cut it wholesale, but I'm reluctant to get rid of the small gems nestled in between the extraneous stuff. These gems -- treasured snippets of conversation and character development -- may fit in other parts of the book. Or maybe I'm trying too hard to shoehorn these little darlings into other scenes, where they don't make sense no matter how skillfully I transition to them. It might just be time to kill some of them.

Practically the entire scene I'm cutting is unrelated to elephants. 

I just can't win. (Pic courtesy of this website.) 

Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch wrote, “Whenever you feel an impulse to perpetrate a piece of exceptionally fine writing, obey it -- whole-heartedly -- and delete it before sending your manuscripts to press. Murder your darlings.” I don't subscribe to this advice wholesale -- some darlings are truly worth keeping -- but he does have a point. And let me tell you, murdering your darlings really does suck.

Maybe I'll post a few of my darlings (the corpses of my darlings? How macabre!) on the website, just so I don't feel like they're lost forever. Although this particular piece of advice from a publisher has made me cautious about posting too much of my book on the web. I'll definitely be creating original content just for the blog (A Bootwick Quigley update is forthcoming -- and wow, I was not prepared for what Boot had to say!), but I won't post whole chapters of the (still unnamed) book online. What a freaky publishing age we live in!

I'm going to spend a few minutes in this happy place, steel my nerves, fetch the scalpel and get to cutting. Wish me luck, Dear Reader!