Novel Maiming

I maimed one of my children this morning. Cut off a full arm and maybe half a leg.
Guys!
I deleted five chapters today.
During NaNo.

I basically wasted my entire weekend moving forward on an entire sub-plot that I revealed too early. And kept going because I didn’t want to delete so much even though my gut said, WHOAWHOAWHOA!
This happened last year during NaNoWriMo and I ditched the novel at 65K in disgust. I got excited to reveal certain elements and revealed them too early, leaving me with far less impact in the last half.
I plotted this novel and still screwed it up. My old pantsing instincts kicked in and lead me astray. Can anyone say EPIC FAIL?
Learn from my novel maiming…if the muse is shouting warnings, don’t mull over the loss of hundreds of words, because THOUSANDS of words later, you’ll be kicking yourself. Just do it early and move on. If you find yourself forcing out every. word. you went wrong somewhere. Delete now before it gets worse.
Trust those instincts.