Trust, and a very sharp knife

Yesterday morning I sat down at my desk, hardly able to stand it.  I had read over book ten on Friday, and all weekend I had changes I wanted to make going through my head.  I was so very eager to hammer them into existence, it was almost a fever.

Today, I'm still eager to get to my desk, but the excitement has been tempered with the reins of indecision.  I am taking out a new character and replacing him with someone else, and the more I pick at the threads to remove him, the more emotionally harder for me it becomes.  He's got some very cool lines and makes some interesting observations that only he can do because of his background.  Letting go of these elements is hard, and I'm torn as to let them go completely, or try to have another character, or even Rachel herself, come to the same conclusions.  I know it will smooth out in a few chapters when this new character starts exerting his own ideas and conclusions, but right now it seems all I'm doing is taking, not giving.

I don't have a reader between me and my editor, so no one is ever going to meet this fully-written, compleate guy, and that's some of my reticence.  He's very cool, and I miss him already.  It can be hard to take out sections of your work if you don't trust yourself as a writer to replace what you are taking.  I know the new character will have ten times the impact on Rachel and the story once I get him in there, but today . . .  Today is hard, even as it's exhilarating seeing the changes begin and working to make them seamless.  It takes trust in yourself, and a very sharp knife.