Radical changes

About 90 minutes at the desk this morning, and it was a slog. Easily distracted. What I ended up doing was rethinking what happens in Chapter 5. I keep coming to the conclusion that the chapter needs to be cut out because it now seems to repeat what has been established in previous chapters since I rewrote those. Continuing to work on it today led me into that territory again.

I'm trying to find a way to work with it. One, because I don't want to get rid of it. It's my precious baby. Two, if it was gone entirely, it effects some other later chapters--something has to be going on at this point in the story for the sake of transitions and build up.

So, I've been trying to think of it this way--the scenario and setting can work even if the specific things that play out and the tone don't work anymore. I ask myself, what my character (who I understand very differently now than when I originally drafted and who is at a different place now anyway as a consequence of the rewriting in previous chapters) do in this situation?

And the answer is that he would do very very different things, which means pretty radical changes in the chapter. It's really starting all over with it. I can hardly do any copying and pasting, because even the details that might be useful are set up in the wrong tone.

The whole prospect is pretty daunting.

I'm starting to regret that I didn't use my month off from the book better by at least keeping it in my mind and stewing on some of these problems.