Next update, I'll be hanging out in the round window of the Golden Oak Library.The Peculiar Question of Rewriting · 3:45am Oct 31st, 2018
I don't think there's anybody here, but I've something to say anyway.
I have a handful of ideas for stories, but there's one that's been on my mind the most. I'd really like to see it come into existence. It's got some wonderful scenes, but somehow I have to turn it into a full story if I ever want others to see it Apparently, I write in vignettes. I can make good scenes, but I can't seem to put together a full story. Nevertheless, I keep plugging away, writing when I have an idea.
Well, I had a spurt of interest and inspiration, and wrote another scene coming to 2000 words. I wrote on it for about two days, and I've run out of ideas for the time being, so I probably won't write again for a while (which is a little disappointing). The scene and the dialog all sounded good at the time, but upon re-reading it, I'm not sure I like how it came out. (I'm sure this is no surprise for people who write all the time, but this is still novel for me, OK?) As I was reading though my notes, I came across another version of the scene I had sketched out, and realized that there are things I like about the unwritten version better. I suspect it would solve some of the things I dislike about the current version. My dilemma is, do I spend my few writing hours redoing a scene I've already written once, or move on to a scene that doesn't exist and move the story closer to completion of a full first draft? (The honest answer is that I'll take ANY dribble of words my motivation can come up with, as long as there's some progress somewhere.)
Assuming you still care about an answer to this question, I'd say that all else equal, you're likely to be better off focusing on finishing the rest of the story first and then going back to redo the scene. Not only is there a good chance that you'll come up with other ways improve the scene while you're working on the rest of the story (don't forget to write yourself reminder notes if you do!) and/or realize ways in which seeming problems can be made to work without any editing necessary, but once you've got a full first draft it's a lot easier to get prereaders on-board, and having a good prereader help makes fixing scenes so much easier.
That said, if things aren't equal and you do end up feeling a drive to revisit the scene in question, it would probably be a good idea to take advantage of it while it lasts. Pretty much everyone hits a point where writing feels like a slog from time to time, so getting as much work done "for free" as possible minimizes the amount of effort you'll have to force yourself through when it's your turn.
Don't worry – as you guessed, that is absolutely normal, and even people who've been publishing successfully for decades still run up against it. Unfortunately, I don't really have any good tips for minimizing how often it comes up: once you've got other people looking at the story you can use their reactions to make an actual objective assessment, but until then, unless you can identify an actual concrete issue to work on, you sort of have to just push the feeling to the back of your mind as best you can.