Today brings a writing dilemma. Back in July I sold one of my stories, Love Stories from the Jungle, to the forthcoming Ideomancer Unbound anthology. It was a pretty painless sale. Contracts were exchanged, money turned up quickly. Then a couple of days ago I got an email from the editors saying they wanted to cut a chunk from the story.

They gave pretty good reasons for this, proper story reasons, not whim. Now I know I'm defensive about my writing. I don't like cuts, but I think I can force myself to do them if necessary. I've made changes on the requests of editors before. So it should be possible for me to do them this time. But. But.


But cutting this particular scene would be a problem for me. If I made the cuts, this would be a perfectly decent story, although a rather one-dimensional one, in my opinion. But it wouldn't be the same story I wrote. In fact I consider this scene to be one of the two key scenes of the story. This was the scene that the entire story was built around. Take it out, and you have a different story.

I understand the editors' objections to the scene. It's an unusual type of scene for a fantasy story. In it, a character who has not appeared until this point and who will not appear afterwards, who is never named or described, addresses the reader directly. In fact, the character harangues the reader, tries to convince the reader of the character's point of view. This is not a technique you will come across often in fantasy. Perhaps for good reason: a little of this kind of thing goes a long way.

The editors' say this scene breaks from the mythical tone of the rest of the story. But again that was the point. I don't really want to explain why here because I don't want to give away too much of the story. Suffice to say that I felt it necessary to shatter the previous tone. The editors would prefer I didn't do that.


So, what am I to do? I could go with the editors and still have a decent story. (I would feel the story was not sufficiently balanced, but maybe no one else would). I've come across two different views on this. The first says that a professional should do what the editor asks him or her to do. Only amateurs are so attached to their babies that they won't lop off the baby's arms. There's a degree of truth to this. When you start out, when every sentence is a struggle, the idea of throwing away a favourite sentence, let alone a favourite scene, is unconscionable *. Part of growing as a writer is learning to chop off excess limbs. After all, a story with six arms is an awkward and odd thing. But a writer also needs to know when to stop the chopping. Two arms and two legs make a well-balanced story; removing the torso leaves it dead. I could follow that approach, but I think I won't. A lot of other readers have liked this scene. Again, that is no real reason. The important reason is that I want the story to be the one I intended to write, not the one the editors' want me to have written. I think I will follow the send approach that I learnt from Octavia Butler (I think it was Octavia's; I'm sure she'll forgive me if I'm assigning other's words to her). That is to learn to ignore the editor when you do not agree with them. Hopefully they'll understand. If my creation turns out to be a tripedal monstrosity from Jupiter, well that's the fun of speculative fiction. And if all else fails, I've already got the money...

* Unconscionable is my favourite word. I intend to use it a lot. Most of the time I will use it inappropriately.