I'm working on adding to an old story of mine that I really like and that is crying out for an addition. The going is painfully slow. The ideas, the situations, the action, the dialog, none of it comes to me as easily as it did back in the day. I've been working, on and off on adding to this story for about three days now. I've got several hours into it and I'll bet that I haven't added a hundred words to it.
I don't have any trouble polishing the story. I read it and I see the factual errors, the awkward transitions, the wrong word, even the actions that go against the character's established personality as they've been written. The corrections or improvements (I hope they're improvements!) come easily but they don't involve any major changes to the characters, the plot or to any subplots. At most, I'm just adding a sentence or two to clarify something or improve the way the story moves along.
There's more of this story in my head, in fact, I know goddamned good and well that there's more of this story waiting to be told. The problem is that I can't seem to find a way to do it that doesn't require a major rewrite of the whole thing. That's what seems to need to happen if I'm going to add on to this story, and that I will not do.
I have zero confidence that any rewrite I do now will improve the story. Small steps. If I find a way to extend this story that I like, then I might tackle a rewrite.
I can sense the general outline of the subplot I want to add but I'll be fucked if I can tease it outta my head and on to my computer in a way that isn't jarringly different from the bulk of the story. I'll keep working on it but to be perfectly honest about it, I'm not very hopeful that it'll happen. Either way, I'll keep you posted.