Have I ever resurrected an old project? How much of the original did I keep?
Funny you should ask. As I'm wrapping up my current WiP, I'm eyeing an old WiP whose conceit works, characters hold up, plot...not so much. When I wrote this WiP fifteen years ago, I wasn't a plotter. I was a pantser, and the meandering of the story reflects why I no longer write without a plan. Dear reader, it is bad, so bad. While writing this WiP, I distinctly remember wondering how the big-time authors of SFF knew what scenes to leave in and what to exclude (it's called a plot, dummy). Needless to say, I wouldn't dream of publishing the WiP as-is. Currently, it's a 275k high fantasy elemental assassin story that goes too far in some aspects and not far enough in others while leaving lots of "uh, what?" moments.
Fortunately, the more I write, the better I get (at least I like to believe that). I've published seven books (soon to be eight) since then. Theoretically, I might maybe be able to salvage the settings, the magic system, the characters, and the GMC of the protagonist. The story itself? Total rewrite.
~shushes the other unpublished books locked in the trunk
and buried in the yard, never to be seen again~
