Thomas’s on a climbing trip in New River Gorge (actually, many of my friends are on climbing trips this weekend, which leaves me sad and lonely), so at night I’ve been rewatching Buffy the Vampire Slayer. And I’ve been reminded of the scene in Season 1 where Willow tricks Cordelia into thinking that the “Del” key on the computer means “deliver,” not “delete,” and poof goes Cordelia’s homework assignment.

Yesterday, I wrote a long blog. Three hours later, I deleted it. Sometimes I go through the archives and delete the entries I don’t like. Deletion is a fine, fine thing. I certainly wish I could delete some of the things I say out loud. I bet Hillary Clinton sure wishes she could delete her comment about Robert Kennedy’s assassination. I wish she could delete that comment. Thinking about it makes my heart beat with outrage.

I’ve been thinking about a trend I see on writers’ blogs, where they present “outtakes’ from their books, scenes that have been edited out. I am of two minds about this. On the one hand, I always enjoy reading the outtakes. It’s a fun way to get a little bit extra out of a book I like, without really changing my impression of the book as a whole. Also, it’s instructive. This entry, so far, makes me seem like a zealous Deleter, but it’s not something I’m good at, just something I’m trying to practice. Thank goodness I have an awesome editor who tells me what I don’t need. So, to return to my point, I like reading author’s outtakes for pleasure, and I also learn from seeing why they were cut.

But I don’t think I could bear to deliver my own cut scenes. I read through one of mine the other day and nearly gagged with horror. Delete! Delete! I tossed it into my computer’s recycling bin. I am all in favor of annihilating some of my writing.