Getting too attached

One problem I have with anything I do creatively is getting too attached.  It makes it very hard to do any editing and even harder to accept any criticism.  It's as if someone has turned to me and said "I don't like your child" even when it's me reviewing what I've done.  When I try to cut word count, oh dear that's a wrench, I find myself mentally apologising to the words that have to be wiped out.  It's perhaps an extension of my tendency to anthropomorphise everything.  It's hard for me to throw things away in the name of making space because the things have done nothing wrong and it's not their fault I have too many of them.  It's even worse if I've had a lot of contact with something that simply wears out, like a toothbrush.  Oh dear lord, the anguish when I have to replace something.

So I'm sitting here doing some editing on a short story which I don't think is short enough and I still have a fair bit to write at the end.  I'm going through it paragraph by paragraph reducing the word count and it's so hard.  Ok, some sentences I look at and think that's awful and make quick work of cutting them up.  But some of them, there's an unhealthy attachment.  It's not as though by taking them out of something I've written that I'm expunging them from the English language.  They still exist whether they're on my page or not.  Why do I feel bad for them?  Why does it hurt me to delete a word or two or worse replace them with something simpler?  I mean, does a surgeon break his heart for every appendix he removes, or a dentist for every tooth pulled?  I'm a (reasonably) sane and rational person and I freely admit this is far from sensible behaviour.

But how nuts am I really?  I remember it was with some relief that I read Arthur Conan Doyle about writing.  He said that Walter Scott would often write and then look back over his work and not recognise a bit of it.  When he wrote it was as though he dictated what a voice outside of himself had told him.  I've always said that myself and generally people just look at me funny and nod.  The story writes itself using my hands and eyes.  I just channel it onto the paper.  Sometimes, if I don't sit down to it, the voice takes a huff and stops telling me the story.  I'm wondering whether because this happens to me, this curious mental process, when I edit part of me feels like I'm carving up something someone else has done.  Is that why I feel so apologetic when I reword things or cut chunks out?  Am I offending a muse that I can't see but can hear?  A muse is a celestial being though and I always imagine them as sweetness and light where what I write is usually quite dark and often brutal.  Is it a muse or a demon that writes through me or is it some detached part of my own psyche that I'm still afraid to offend?  I don't want it to stop speaking to me, whatever it is.


Whether it's a misplaced anthropomorphism, a muse, a demon, or just a part of me, I'm definitely too attached to what I create.  Will that make me too worried to send it out into the world to be ripped apart and disparaged by anyone who feels like it?  I hope not.  Perhaps it's time to let my brain-children make their own way in the world while I wait for them to let me know how they're getting on.  There I go anthropomorphising again.  They are not alive, Juliet, stop getting so attached!