I just killed my babies and I feel great! I took the little brats down to the end of the garden and I bumped them off with a rusty hatchet. At last, I feel truly alive!!!

…Hold on! …No just put the phone down …The authorities don’t need to get involved …I’m talking metaphorics!! …You do understand that, don’t you? … Look let me explain. 

It’s just an expression we use. We who use the words for to make a living. When we write we always have a little pet, a favourite scene or sequence which we just love above all others. It’s our little baby. It gives us so much joy and pleasure. Baby is beautiful, baby is clever, baby is funny but sometimes… baby must die.

It’s cruel, I know. But often it’s the very scene you dote on, which just has to go. Sometimes it’s just out of place and blocking the flow of the story, sometimes its from an early draft when the story was something completely different, and sometimes it just don’t work. And that’s when daddy’s gotta sharpen his axe.

So, I’d like you to join me in paying tribute to page 1, Scene 7. You’ll always be beautiful in my mind. I’ll never forget the times we had together. I’ll always feel a pang of guilt. But I know in my heart, you have gone to a better place. Amen.