I’m talking Wife Novel out with Long Suffering Husband:

Me: I’m just not sure if that motivation makes sense anymore.

LSH: It does, because of [describes a scene].

Me: No, that scene isn’t in the book anymore.

LSH: OK, but there’s still [describes another scene].

Me: I cut that one too.

LSH: Yeah but [character] still…

Me: I actually combined her with [another character] when I changed everyone’s ages.

LSH (in great distress): Is anything familiar still in this book?!?!

Me: No! Don’t you see? This is tough love editing. We’re burning the whole house down to the ground and rebuilding from the ashes!

LSH: This writing stuff is too stressful for me.

My husband is almost always my first reader.

I’m always somewhat amazed/flattered how attached he is to my writing, even in the draft stage. Sometimes I think he’s more attached to it then I am. I will mercilessly cut characters and scenes and completely change a story from the ground up if it makes it better and he sits there with wide eyes, totally off-put by this and says things like, “But it’s always happened the other way!” and I feel like I should be consoling him for the loss of that cut section.

There was a part in Mistress Novel that I thought about changing in a big way that he actually fought me on. He was very impassioned about it and actually shouted, “I have been picturing that scene in my head over and over since you first told me your outline. I love that scene.”

I’m always somewhat mystified when he has this reaction. On one hand, he’s not a writer or a big reader so I always take his advice with a grain of salt. There was one time I gave him a section to read and he said he said it was perfect and to leave it alone. I went upstairs and rewrote it anyway because I didn’t think it worked and then gave him the new version hours later. “Whoa,” he said, “It’s much better.” His credibility took a hit that day.

On the other hand, he’s my biggest fan on a personal level but I think he’s also become my work’s biggest fan. Meaning, he’s almost a fanboy to the point where he loves some of my stuff so much that he’s religious about it and doesn’t want me to change anything like we’re having some kind of George Lucas, stop editing Star Wars kind of thing going on here. But he so often reads my stuff very early into the process, it’s inevitable that things are going to change. I want what I write to be the best it can possibly be and I have no mercy when I edit.

If I’m willing to hack it to bits to rebuild it better, it seems weird that he isn’t. After all, I’m the one that wrote the fool thing in the first place. So much writing advice warns you that you’ll have to kill your darlings, I feel unprepared for what happens when I kill his darlings.

But, at the same time, having a passionate advocate for what you write is invaluable, especially when you’re having one of those writer moments when you need to be talked down off the ledge.

What do you think?