I've decided to clean up the flow of the chapters themselves (as opposed to the novels) by spotlighting different chapters at random. So I listed out all the chapters and I bounce randomly from one to another (such as from Ch. 29 to Ch.18). This keeps me from polishing the same 8 starting chapters over and over.
The trouble is that the later chapters are horrible compared to the early ones and it's such a slog to have to get them into fighting fit condition. It's damn near depressing looking at the clumsy and awkward phrasing. It's okay once I get into the thick of the chapter but the start of each one is daunting as I pull my mind out of what went before and start afresh. I do think it's helped, even though it's steadily increased my word count as I realize a whole bunch of necessary additions to each chapters to make them less stop-startery.
Agreed. Sometimes I jump forward as well when polishing and find the change helps.
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