“Murder Your Darlings,”(On Style, chapter 12) is a quote from Arthur Quiller-Couch’s series of published lectures (On the Art of Writing, 1916) He encouraged writer’s to, “…perpetrate a piece of exceptionally fine writing, obey it–wholeheartedly–and delete it before sending your manuscript to press…”
He failed to mention, however, that tapping the delete button would require Hershey Kiss therapy for at least a month.
Source: http://grammar.about.com/od/rhetoricstyle/a/murderquiller.htm
Phyllis A. Still 
For me, the process of deleting words, parts of scenes, parts of backstory, parts of dialogue, things that clarify what’s happening, clever verbs, double tellings, etc. is the most unnatural and probably the most beneficial thing I’m learning to do with my fiction.
Great post! Thank you.
Talmage
storiform
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Thank you Talmage 🙂 To make the process a little easier, I created a deleted scenes folder where those “perfect” tidbits can hide for awhile. Sometimes they were created for a different purpose in the story or even a new story. This strategy seems to appease my creative being while my editing being is in control.
Happy Writing.
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