When I revised the book this fall I made some changes to Liza, though, and as a result the “foolish boy” lines didn’t quite fit–but they were, literally, the last thing to go. I hung onto them out of a sort of fondness through the first two rounds of editorial revision, and only when, the day before copyedits, my editor asked if we really needed them did I finally edit them away.
Anyway, just a few days ago, as I was working on TE, one of my tertiary characters turned to one of my secondary characters and whispered, in a not-quite-human-voice, “Foolish boy.”
This makes me smile.
I do wonder whether I’ll actually get to keep it this time, though–or whether this will become something I’ll be writing and deleting from manuscripts for the rest of my writing life. 🙂