Delete = Death

Less than an hour ago I deleted approximately 130 pages from a work in progress.

It felt really good. It doesn’t always.

Sometimes words need to die to make the whole stronger. I essentially deleted the last half of my novel because it had become dead weight. The beginning had evolved beyond what the ending promised. It had to go. There was no salvaging it, no restructuring it. The ending needed to die. It feels like that at times. When you press that one button on the computer marked DEL, it can feel like death. Not all death is bad, sometimes it simply signals a rebirth. But for those other moment, for those scenes where pressing DEL feels like murder, I keep a “deleted file”.

I didn’t keep this half of my novel, though. This was a much-needed transition. I’m taking this story in a different direction, and I like it. This was a story I began almost six years ago, and in that time I have evolved, and so have my characters and the world they inhabit. The novel, the actual words, they are only just beginning to catch up.

There are many quotes out there about the power of words. The pen is mightier than the sword and all that. While I believe in the power of words, in their ability to effect change and emotion, I also believe in the power of the absence of words. Sometimes silence says as much as sound. Sometimes the loss of words can be just as powerful as the creation of them. And make no mistake, for many a writer, DEL means loss. We are losing something when we erase what we have written. These words, these characters and worlds we create, are a part of ourselves, and I don’t think we delete them lightly. But sometimes the DEL symbolizes that necessary change that will take your novel to the next phase. An evolution of both text and author. Those moments feel good.

So yes, I killed 130 pages worth of words today. But I am looking forward to creating more.