Rewriting as a Destructive Force

There's this one story I've been working on since December 2006. First it was called Fine Line, then it was called At The Swing Set, then it was back to Fine Line, now it's Hating Keiran Holmes. I have been to hell and back with this beast. It took until April 2008 just to finish the first draft. I've lost count of how many revisions it's gone through since then.

Spot the difference:

(17-year-old-me who didn't know what the flip she was doing)

She hated him. She hated the way his black hair looked all shiny and soft and flipped whenever he turned to look at her. She hated how deep his dark green eyes were, and the little specks of gold that were in them. She hated the way he winked at her and his stupid lopsided grin. She hated it when the other girls would start giggling all over him, like he was some sort of celebrity to be giggled over and ogled at. And she especially hated it when the big idiot was nice to her!

(21-year-old-me who still doesn't know what the flip she's doing)

Caomhe thought she deserved a gold medal for not screaming when she found out Keiran was her biology lab partner. But she couldn’t say she didn’t share Keiran’s sentiment of, “No! Please, if you love us, no!”
The class laughed. Most of them had an awareness of Keiran and Caomhe’s five-year feud. Caomhe looked over at Fiona, who surely would empathize with her. Fiona struggled to contain her snickers. Caomhe glared at her. Some best friend.

So yeah. Big, dramatic changes in the last four-odd years. Then around the end of last year, I started thinking, "Wait. What if all this neurotic editing is just undoing things that are working in the story?" THAT... is what I like to call the Rewriting Cycle of Death. Like this:

1) Write first draft.
2) Edit the draft.
3) Repeat steps two and three to the point where none of the original manuscript remains.
4) Realize you have a whole new first draft.

At this point, I see two options. Recognize that you're being insane, even for a writer, or you can repeat steps two and three until they check you into the [mental] hospital.

Moral of the day: there is such thing as too much of a good thing. Even edits.