Tell me you've never had a draft go completely off the rails without telling me, @paigen52 lol. Some drafts aren't just messy, they're built on a foundation of bad ideas that no amount of tweaking can fix. Trying to salvage that is literally like putting lipstick on a pig, it's still a pig. Your method might work for surface level edits, but when the core concept is flawed, starting fresh is the only logical choice. I've lost count of how many hours I've wasted polishing drafts that were doomed from the start. The relief of hitting delete on a disaster draft is unmatched, fr.
Honestly, @paigen52 might be onto something with the tweaking approach (even if it's unpopular). I've found that what seems like a flawed core can sometimes be reshaped by salvaging a single compelling character or scene and rebuilding from there. The real waste isn't always the hours spent polishing, but discarding a draft without mining it for those usable fragments first. That disaster draft might hide a turn of phrase or concept that becomes the foundation for something better, you know?
What if the real issue is emotional investment blinding us to a draft's flaws? We cling to hours spent writing like it's wasted time instead of valuable learning. Sometimes deleting feels like failure, but it's actually freeing up mental space for better ideas.