I hate cutting words.
Let me rephrase that: I hate cutting words during the writing phase. During revisions, it’s fine and natural and expected, and it happens with seemingly reckless abandon. Blue ink pours across the page as words are removed, changed, rearranged, twisted, added, and excised.
During the writing phase, I expect to keep writing until I’m done writing. Today, I went back and cut almost 8,000 words, to a point when the story went wrong. It’s a necessary and unavoidable cut, but it comes at a point when I hate to be cutting.
However, you do what you must, and sometimes you must cut words, even if some of them will be sorely missed.
Oh I hate that!! Do you retain what you cut somewhere in a file so that you can recycle it later?
Sure, I save it. But it’s probably a total loss in this case, unless little bits get salvaged for this story. Which I doubt.
I know a bunch of people who don’t tend to keep ‘extractions’ – ever, for any reason. I’ve found that sometimes I can rework what I’ve pulled out to use somewhere else at some other time, or sometimes a part of that or a bit of dialogue. It’s weird sometimes how that works out. 😉