Writing Things I Shouldn't Have to Keep Reminding Myself Of #1

A thought occurred to me today as I struggled a bit with a rewrite of chapter 1 of the new novel, and I realized I had had the thought before. But apparently I needed some reminding.Note to self: Rewriting is NOT RevisingYes, they do both start with "re" and end in "ing," but there the similarity ends. Yes, if you're revising a scene you've already written, the prose should be much more polished, there should be less extraneous stuff and more relevant stuff, pacing should be tighter, and it shouldn't read like a first draft.HOWEVER, if you're writing an entirely new scene to replace an old scene because you decided to change some big things like the setting, the circumstances of characters meeting, etc. and you're basically writing from scratch with the exception of a few sentences or details you can lift out of the old scene and drop in verbatim, it is still going to read like a first draft. It *is* a first draft. Duh. So don't obsess about whether it is superior to the first version, which went through at least two drafts. You decided to write a new scene for some pretty good reasons. Now, give it permission to suck like a first draft is supposed to suck. Don't agonize about every word choice. Leave notes to yourself in brackets for things you want to fix later, just like you normally do in a first draft. Once you get to the end of the scene or chapter, you can go back later and work on removing the suck. You've done it before, after all.There, now I feel better. I'll have to mark this post to look at again in about a year when I'm probably pulling my hair out rewriting something else.