Writing Wednesdays: when the editorial letter means starting over

I have a confession ... I was silly excited to get my editorial letter last month. I decided to work with a developmental editor after hitting a pretty nasty crisis of confidence. The manuscript wasn't bad but it also wasn't as good as I knew it could be.  

So, yeah, I was expecting some substantial changes. And then came the email ... dum, dum, dum ... 

10 pages, single-spaced of editorial notes and embedded notes within the manuscript itself (multiple notes on pretty much every page). 

I read the letter, then read it again. And then I cried. She'd been able to get into my head and extract the story I'd wanted to write. 

I read the editorial again, this time with highlighters. I pulled out my W plot board and sticky notes (matching colors to the highlighters), and fresh storyboard pages and sat down to map out the edits. For those who've read any of my writing blog posts, you know I'm not a plotter when drafting. I am, however, a planner when it comes to revisions.  This is when my inner nerd comes out.

But the more I looked at the structure, the clearer it became that the book I wanted to write wasn't really the book I'd written. 

Instead of revising existing pages, I opened a new word document and started with Chapter One. There are passages that I'm cutting and pasting into the new document but most is new writing. I've never written so many words in such a short period of time and there are still plenty of times when I catch myself doubting the direction I'm going. But I can honestly say, I've also never been this excited about dumping more than 2/3 of a manuscript.