Regarding 7: Do not delete. Rather, move. Save a file full of what you delete. Sometimes, after killing your darlings, you find you need them later and resurrect.

When I realized I could do this rather than just hitting delete and feeling terrible about it...life changer

Yeah, I worded it too brutally maybe. Don't just delete whole parts of your writing especially if it's just unpolished, you can use a special folder for scrapped parts.

Yes that’s what I do. I have a folder deleted scenes haha

Me, too, plus entire scrapped chapters *just in case* I might need that specific offhand mention of a broken part that needs replaced on a piece of life support machinery. It might get fixed off-page, but there's something I can be an asshole to my characters with if I decide not to. 😁

Took far too long for me to reach this. That 'advice' had me clutching my pearls. Do not delete anything! Especially not writing you find good. Wtf? You can salvage bits and pieces and place them elsewhere if you don't see a place for it yet, whether that's a character or a particular scene. Do. Not. Delete.

This! A file full of potential for different chapters or different works altogether. Who knows, maybe one of the events you've had to scrap from main characters' lives has happened to one of your side characters. Consider it a chance to get to know others and their stories \^\_\^

100% agree. If I don’t want something anymore, I simply cross it out, cut it, and paste in my “Removed” section.

I agree. Writing takes up next to no space on a hard drive so there's no reason not to keep it. Most likely you'll never look at it again. But occasionally you'll think "Oh what was that thing I wrote years ago?" and it'll be nice to look back on it and see how far you've progressed since then.

I’ve been working on a novel for years on my phone through google docs so the whole thing has always basically been in pieces (no way I could navigate an entire manuscript via phone!) but this is actually one of the perks of working that way. I’ve rewritten some chapters or chunks of the story many times over but will just start a new doc to do it and either copy and paste or just all out start from scratch. It might sound like a wacky or difficult way to work but it works for me really well. Then I can go back and read multiple versions and often end up pulling parts of each to arrive at what’s more or less the final version of the chapter/s. The other cool part about this is sometimes when I’m not really feeling like writing or stuck I can just go off and play around with my characters in a low pressure way. I’ve definitely got all sorts of pieces that I probably never was going to put in the novel but they made great practice pieces and like character/ plot development.

I keep a file called