Frankendraft

I didn't make up the term. But I totally get it.

I read it on Janice Hardy's excellent post about whether or not to pull that "trunk manuscript" out of the drawer and revise. Here's just a tiny bit of what she has to say:

Does it fix what went wrong? Before you dive in and spend who knows how long just to wind up in the same spot, try outlining or summarizing the new direction. Does it fix the original problems?
Is the draft salvageable or do you need to start over? Reworking an old draft that didn’t work risks turning it into a Frankendraft (pieces of novel sewed together to form a plot, but it really doesn’t fit), so consider how you want to proceed carefully. Starting over can seem like more work, but not if it takes you three times longer to revise what’s there. 

Thank you, Rosi Hollinbeck, for your excellent blogposts that always give me something to ponder. AND she almost always has a book to give away!



(And, maybe this is actually what I'm doing here...)