Writer Friendly or Reader Friendly?

For a writer, this is ultimately the key question. Most of what we create looks good to ourselves, but that doesn't mean it works. Especially when we try hard to write well, the result is often self-indulgence. (Writers like David Foster Wallace made careers out of self-indulgence.)

Which is a roundabout way of saying I've put my chief fiction prototype back in the shop. I've begun taking it apart, then will reconstruct it, paring much of it. With the original version I took my notions of modernism too far.

With this proposed ebook I behaved first like an Orson Welles with "The Magnificent Ambersons"-- trying new ideas and a few new tricks, heedless of overall effect. For the reconstruction I need to be more like Welles's editor Robert Wise-- putting together a version that's coherent and moves.