: Re: As an author, can I afford to get emotionally attached to my work? It's said that to be a good writer you ought to "Write what you feel and feel what you write." While this sounds

@Smith147

Cruel To Be Kind...
In the right measure, passion and ruthlessness must go hand in hand. You must love your writing unless you're crazy-brilliant, and I'd argue you can't be without the passion. Nothing is sacred, however, and you must abandon cherished motifs and plotlines when the story transforms into something different.
The best example I can think of is characters. I LOVE my main characters passionately, but I beat the living **** out of them on a regular basis. (Okay, maybe there was that time I let my main character see her dad one last time before he died, but I think it totally worked in the end...) If they lived happy, content lives, they would be boring.
Now don't give up on the elements of the story you want to keep. Maybe it's the wrong story. So the 5 and dime from your childhood doesn't make sense in your gritty urban murder mystery. Maybe in the next story, it happens in a small town where it's the perfect element for small town charm (and murder).
I'm upvoting MarielS, especially about good beta readers (and editors, I might add). Everyone is blind to their own flaws, or else paralyzed by them. I haven't had one, but alpha readers go chapter by chapter, as I understand, while you write. These people need to like you well enough to read your garbage (at times) but not so well they love your garbage also (so no moms).

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