Words are precious. At least that’s what I thought when I first started writing. I wrote 10,000 words! That’s incredible!

But now that I’ve written a lot of words (seven full-length novels and two novellas at last count — I swear I will release one someday), words are not nearly as important to me as they were in the beginning. In the editing process in those first novels, I would sometimes come across sections that didn’t work or that needed to be removed based on other changes in the book. That was always hard, and I would save those sections in a separate document in hopes of using them later.

But now, I actually like hitting delete. I have absolutely no problem whatsoever deleting whole sections…pages…chapters even. Because really, it’s fine. There are more where those came from. It’s actually cathartic. Out with the bad — in with the good. Toss out the riff-raff to make room for the poetry. Like when you scrub a dirty kitchen counter, washing away the grime.

I’ve talked to beginner writers who are afraid of changing their stories because then they’d have to delete sections or start over. I understand that fear, because when you are first starting out, you are really proud of your words, and most of all, you are afraid you won’t be able to come up with more that are as good as those are.

But trust me when I say that there are so many more WAY BETTER words in you, that won’t be released until you’ve written a bunch of words. Writing mentors say that you have to write a million words before you really “get it.” I’m not there yet, but I’m well on my way. And the more I write, the more ideas that come for more stories to write and more types of characters to develop.

Some great advice I got once in a workshop was to never save anything for later. If you have a good idea for a line or a character, a story, use it NOW. Because more will come to you later, and chances are when you read that line in six months to a year, it will be lackluster compared to the punch it packs now.

So write, and write, and write some more. And don’t be afraid to hit delete, because there are better words waiting to occupy that space.