IWSG: Second-Guessing Your Work

 Summer seems to leave as quickly as it comes. Here we are at August already, which means the school year will be starting soon for many children. Of course, we must mark the new month with another post for the Insecure Writer's Support Group. If you're not already familiar with them (though I assume most of you reading this post are here because of the IWSG), you can learn more about them on their website or Facebook page.

Our hosts this month are Kate Larkindale, Diane Burton, Janet Alcorn, and Shannon Lawrence.

Here's our question for August: Have you ever written something that afterwards you felt conflicted about? If so, did you let it stay how it was, take it out, or rewrite it?

I think it's quite common for writers to feel conflicted about their work, particularly if they're writing about something political or controversial. One example from my writing career comes from Twinned Universes. In an early draft, the quartet of main and secondary teenage characters experience an episode of casual racism. (Two of them are obviously biracial and one is less obviously multiracial. While they're shopping for clothes, the store owner assumes they're planning to steal from her.) My white editor thought this kind of thing didn't happen, and I rewrote the scene to remove the incident. Several years later, it finally occurred to me that due to white privilege, she wouldn't have personal experience with this kind of racism. I debated restoring that incident but decided it didn't work as well anymore in the revised scene. However, the heroine of my Abigail Ritter Cozy Mystery series is half Filipina, and I do include in this series incidents where she wishes she was blonde or where other people don't believe that she was really born in a small Wisconsin town. 

Have you changed your work due to someone else's suggestion and then wished you hadn't? Feel free to talk about it in the comments.