I hope that unlike Labbie, I can escape this with my skin in tact. I'll probably harvest bits of the scene that gets scrapped because frankly, I like them both. Nevertheless, they cannot both exist in the same story (kinda like matter and anti-matter, I guess).
Oh, absolutely, Rac! When I said it kills me to make a choice I was definitely only meaning in the context of whatever WIP I'm working on. But I never lose anything entirely. I dump what I can't use for that particular story into a holding file and check it regularly to see if there's anything in there suitable for the next WIP.
It's a very rare case when what I have to cut out of one story is so pertinent to it that I can't use it anywhere else. I think that's only happened once, that I recall.
In the main though, definitely, the watchword is recycle!! And hold onto everything you write - because it will come in handy one day without a doubt. <g>
LabRat
