Last month I made a timeline of events for Kyrie as I remembered it. However, I vaguely remembered deep questions/conversations about art being rather important to the story. I couldn't for the life of me remember these questions, so I went back to the original rough draft to find them so I could insert them into the timeline.
I haven't read the original unedited NaNoWriMo rough draft since probably 2018, if not before. I had read it many times before then, however, and since I tend to memorise things in writing easily, I thought I basically had it down pat.
I was shocked, then, to find that the story sketched out on the timeline and the story I was reading were two completely different stories.
The one in my timeline was about a seasoned performer, a cynic hardened by years of experience and a litany of tragedies. The one in the binder holding the printed rough draft was about a humble, gifted, passionate creature naught more than a child. If the main character was based on me, the rough draft is me in 2013, before everything happened, and the timeline is me now. And they are two very different people.
The problem is -- I like the rough draft better.
The literal only thing I dislike about it is the amount of exposition. And even then, I sort of feel like it fits the narrative voice of the character. It can't be because I'm attached to it -- I had completely forgotten many major scenes in the rough draft. Maybe this is why I've been having SO much trouble revising it -- because my soul knew that what I was coming up with was garbage in comparison to the original.
So now what? I can't possibly expect to publish a literal rough draft with a couple of dabs of paint here and there -- can I?
I really don't know where to go from here. Do I stop the rewrite altogether? Do I scrap the rewrite? If so, what do I replace it with? Is the rough draft really that good?
Have I mentioned I really, really hate novel revision?
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