Exhausting or energizing?

It's Day 3 of WFMD Challenge.

What's on my plate today: an overall examination of my young adult novel that is (finally) nearing the end of the first draft. I have become aware of a number of things that are not working but wanted to finish the draft before revising. Now it's time to retrieve the new knowledge and insights I'd filed away to figure out how I can make it work. 

It's another one of those difficult processes to begin, because there is so much that is new and untested, and it is difficult to seperate the essentials from the peripherals. Plus, I know that the next revision, my second draft, will depend on this new road map, and I really would like to avoid as many false paths as possible. 

In other words, too many decisions have to be made based on too few indisputable "knowns." 

I used to love this very situation as a young piano teacher. Every year at the end of summer, I would take out folders of my students for that year (I taught at a community music school, and while most of the time we kept our students for years, we did get students new to us every year because of scheduling  issues or teachers leaving.) Sitting at my desk with their folders before me, trying to piece together what each student need was a most enjoyable and energizing process. 

Now the prospect of that just exhausts me. 

Let's see if this free writing with no (wink! wink!) real expectations of an end product will lead. 

What are you writing today?