Revision

There's not enough room here to tell you what I've learned in the ten years I've been writing, but yesterday something struck me that I wanted to share. I'm in the middle of the second revision to my second novel, "Staying Afloat," (the story of a stay-at-home wife and mother who morphs into a sex-crazed adulteress) and it occurred to me how easy it is to fall in love with an especially creative metaphor, sentence, or word and how difficult it is to cut it, even when your critique group tells you to. I found the only way I can bring myself to do this is to cut it and paste it to a new document I call "leftovers," hopefully to be used another time. It makes me feel better to know my favorites have not been totally discarded. Keep writing!