Throwing away 10,000 words.

I'm going to start the book from scratch, without referring the the earlier version whatsoever.  10K words, gone.

Thing is, I have no trouble writing, you know.  I mean, I can cover that ground pretty quickly now that I have a clear idea of what I'm trying to accomplish.

It's very tempting to try to adjust the previous material.  But often the tone and the information and the viewpoint and the sequence have to be changed so much that what happens is a horrible quagmire, a patchwork that takes just as long or longer to fix and usually isn't as good.

At the end, I can go through those 10K words, and if there is a sterling sentence or passage that doesn't have to be changed and which fits the new material, then OK.  I can add it.  But not until I've written a whole new framework.

The middle part of the book is mostly written, but I have to start the book over at the beginning.  The first 3 chapters are going to be in the viewpoint of Napoleon, a Tusker, which may be a dangerous thing to do -- but I figure if readers have gotten this far, they'll be willing to go along with it.


Later:  Wrote the first chapter, totally fresh.  Read it to Linda.  She liked it.