These are notes from the LTUE conference. Any inaccuracies are the fault of the note taker.

Q: How can you distance yourself from an idea?
– Don’t think of your work as a baby. You have a product. You want it to be the best in front of an agent or an edit. Think about how you raise your children. Think of what your children want to become. Kids may do something that will not be useful when they are adults. Why is your idea not going toward your goal? What limits your manuscripts to make it more mature to publication?
– The section of your story that comes from you as a person is often the sections that need to be cut, it is something that you wanted to happen. Panelists have a deleted scene folder. One panelist had a file for every book that includes things he’s deleted. He can’t read through those darlings and print parts of the book with a deleted scenes section. Shove them in the closet for a while.
– You have to look at the work you are trying to produce as a finished product. The final product as a whole is the important thing. You don’t have to go looking for scenes to delete. Instead, you need to see which part of the book is broken. The ending is not working. Is it not built up properly? Is your side character more interesting than your main character? What is the problem and how to fix it? Fixing a problem means fixing or delete the item you love. The result is that the final product will be better.
– When you have been writing long enough you can learn to delete a favorite scene it feels ok. The deleted scenes might become something else. The sculptor is already in the marble and you have to chip away the marble to get the stature. Through time and distance, you can see later why a scene was deleted. Some old scenes that might be able to use in other stories.
– Some deleted scenes might become a standalone short story.
Q: how we abandon an idea without guilt?
– The presenter has a 20 yr. old daughter who has not left the home. As a father, he is not certain if he is ready for the child to leave the nest. He invested a lot of time and finance to raising that child. That is why the presenter has a deleted scene folder. The distance can give you a perspective. Write a book put it way and come back to it. Time can give you more perspective.
– Writers create things. You need to think of yourself as a creator of new things and not a preserver of old things. The odds are good you have to go through 6+ revisions of the same book. You get to fix that hole or change the characterization. You need to add new scenes because the new scene is better because you are a better writer.
– One author put in a scene of a Spaghetti Dinner. It killed the tension of the story. The reason she had put the dinner in the first place was that it had been the motivation of the story. You need to have a scene serve multiple purposes.
Q: why feel guilty?
– We need to address those emotions underlying the guilt. You pour your heart and soul into a story. You are emotionally invested and it feels like a real person to you. The presenter loved the first scene of his first book. The opening scene was a kid being bored. The reader said you don’t want to be your reader to be bored. He deleted the scene and took what was important in the scene and wove important information into later chapters.
Q: should we mourn the loss of a book or scene?
– One panelist got stuck on a book and stopped writing. A friend told an author that the reason she could not rite is she was morning the loss of part of a book or writers’ block, and could not continue. Some feel regret about losing a scene because it is part of the author that defined that scene.
Q: how to delete a darling that helps the story but you don’t like what the story has become?
– You want someone else to care about what you write and realized that as an author, I can’t write for me. You need to abandon your ego. You may not like what a story became but you can be a successful author by making changes that improve the story. Once you’re successful you can write your passion projects.
– It does not have to be an all or nothing. What your editor tells you is not necessary, that advice is a hard and fast rule. See if there is a way to keep the essence of your idea. Make sure the darling is essential to your story and not to stroke your ego. See what is wrong with the scene and revise it.
– The best writer-author knows are the best reviewers. Your job is to keep working on something until it is awesome.
Q: how do you identify the darling that is throwing something off?
– Those who can help define a problem in your story, is a good editor, writing group or beta readers are also good resources. Authors often can’t see their own mistakes. Maybe the problem is that the climax does not work. Is it not setup right? Is the character not likable?
– If you write a series you have book one and book 2. During book two you realize it would have been better if a certain event had happened in book 1. As you become a better writer you will find solutions to how to work out a solution without having to revise book one. As you revise an ending scene some of the beginning scenes may need to be advised.
– A darling may need to be deleted because it introduced a plotline that is no longer relevant.