If you’re a writer, you’re well aware that not everything you write will end up in the final draft of your text. I am no different. I cut stuff out of blog posts that I think don’t fit or don’t add anything.

And I was no different in regards to my book. Not every essay I wrote or drafted made it into the final version. It’s not that I thought they were bad. Or that they didn’t have a place in the collection.

Quite the contrary. The essays were good ideas and had a rightfully place in collection. If I wanted to they could have been included and would have fit right in with the rest of them. So, what happened? Well, there was a couple of things….

There were five essays that I cut from Living Rent Free In My Head. Over the course of the next five days, you’ll find out about all of them. Let’s begin with You Shouldn’t Feel Guilty About What You Enjoy aka Guilty Pleasures.

This was going to be an essay about why I disliked people proclaiming things they like as guilty pleasures. Now, I’m guilty of doing this sometimes my self. If I enjoy something that is of lower quality than the rest of the things I consume, I’m going to feel a bit guilty about it.

Not that I’m a snob. I just subconsciously think I could make better use of my time by enjoying something of a higher quality. But once I get over that line of thinking, I realize it’s pretty stupid.

People should just like what they want to like without there being any shame to it. So what, I like romantic comedies and so called “chick flicks” (hate that term). Why do I need to reduce them to guilty pleasures? That line of thinking was where I was going to take my essay.

I liked the idea behind the essay. I really did. But I just didn’t think it had any legs to stand on. By that I mean I didn’t think there was much room to cover in it. It felt like something I could express in a few paragraphs. Not enough for a full essay like I needed it to.

And anything else I could try to fit into would have just been filler and I didn’t want that. I still do like the idea. I can see myself developing it into a fledged out essay with more layers added to it in the future. Maybe for the blog or another collection? We’ll see.

Come back tomorrow and we’ll take a look at the next essay I decided not to include.