Check-In – Day 26

[samuraiter]

If Christmas (December 25) is a day of giving, then Return Day (December 26) is a day of taking back, but I hope, if you're writing, that you're not taking back any of those precious words. :-) How's it going today?

— Thinking. Maybe a little, maybe a lot.
— Writing.
— Planning and / or researching.
— Editing.
— Sending things to the beta.
— Posting!
— Relaxing, taking a break, etc.
— Other stuff-ing. Look at the comment.

Question for today: If you have to throw something out during your editing process, how much do you typically discard? A few words or phrases? A couple of sentences? A whole paragraph? ... The entire piece?

Comments

[sperrywink]

I wrote this morning, and finished a ficlet. It's for an exchange which won't be revealed until January 15th, but happy to have it done.

I will usually throw out a few words or phrases, anything more and I get twitchy. A whole paragraph might make me cry. I think I rewrote a whole beginning once, and it was torture letting go of the original, even though I made it better the second time around.

[linaewen]

I'm just getting my day started, so I don't have any writing to report as yet -- however, it's on the docket for the day!

I usually only discard a few words or phrases, at most a couple of sentences. That's usually enough to right anything that has gone wrong so that I don't need to do anything more drastic to save the piece.

[snowynight]

I finished a fic and posted to fandom_stocking after two days of idleness.

Question: It depends, but I'm known to throw out entire piece more than once in the editing process. :(

[lilly_c]

I've not got much done at all with having family visiting, thankfully they're away home tomorrow.

I try not to throw away too much in case it's useful for something else. The chapter I've been editing for ages has had one scene thrown out at least eight times already. Having a character who rarely cries in canon doing just that is proving to be tricky to get right.