When improvements aren't improvements.

I went back and looked at my original version of chapter one.  And it was refreshingly simple and straightforward.

Which is strange, because every improvement I've made since has been an improvement, taken singly.  But combined in a whole, they detracted.

So I kept only the most felicitous of the new words, and stuck mostly to the older version.  I think it reads much better.

That's a relief.

Fortunately, I haven't done this kind of overwriting to the rest of the book.  Though this is a good warning.

Now I can move on.