Many writers are afraid to throw away work. It could be something they can’t seem to sell, or it could be the original version of a chapter rewritten. It could be that perfect sentence that someone told you to cut out, that you can’t see to let loose of. It could be a scene you played with once, and it was perfection . . . you just didn’t have any idea what to do with it.

We’ve all written those pieces we could not throw away. I used to save them. And I occasionally cut out a section of a chapter and keep it just in case. The truth is, however, out of the 20 books I’ve written, I’ve only gone back and salvaged two of those little pieces. One was a six-hundred-word scene. The other was a long paragraph.

Today, I throw things away. The chances of me using them again are slim to none. It’s just hoarding.

Once traveling cross country, I wrote on a novel to occupy my time. I created an entire chapter and edited several others. When I arrived at my motel room, however, the flash drive was gone. I had not saved it in the cloud. All that work . . . gone.

After an hour of fussing, and another hour of stewing, I faced up to the fact I had to write the chapter over, from scratch. Truth was, what I wrote was every bit as good, if not better.

We hate waste like that, but is it waste? Really? As writers, we are an endless supply of words. Each line we write improves us. And the more we have to practice at our craft, the better we get.

So if fate robs you of a page, a scene, or a chapter, let it go. Fretting won’t change a thing. Look at it as the universe telling you that you were capable of something even better.