Theseus's paradox applied to novel manuscript editing - Did I make a new story?

Along with this month's writing update I've tried to clean things up a little bit on other parts of the website. Under the Author tab, I've added a link to the publisher of my short story in the Shapers of Worlds anthology, and under the Media tab I finally got around to adding the interview I did with Pixigonal. That chat was fun because we went off the beaten path about my writing process and got to talk about some fun stuff (favorite movies, video games, etc.). I'm slowly lining up podcast interviews for 2026 and already have one in the works, so more news on that will be coming after the holidays.

The majority of my writing time lately has been spent in revision. After I got back comments from my editor I was able to group the work needed to be done as either character fixes or plot fixes. It turned out that the character fixes were much easier because they were only needed in the first half of the story. However, the plot fixes were substantial and needed throughout the entire draft, which got me thinking about boats.

While making these big sweeping revisions that changed major plot elements and the direction of the story in several places, I was reminded of something I had read about a long time about called The Ship of Theseus (or Theseus's paradox). The short version of it is, if you take a ship and slowly over time replace every part, do you have a new ship or the same ship? It's a thought experiment trying to grapple with if the "true" ship is comprised of its form (or concept) versus of its components (or materials). The nuances of it are lost on a non-philosopher like me, but I still think it is a neat idea to think about in a casual way.

I'm bringing this up because the second half of my novel went though major revisions where scenes and entire chapters were removed and replaced with new text, which included changes in character interactions and plot elements. If I go back to my original outline, the core plot beats are still there, but how characters went from A to B to C changed a great deal. To use another metaphor, if my original draft was a house, my editor's notes had me gut the lower level of the house to the studs and do a major remodel. The good news is that the feedback I'm getting now on this "new" version is that it is faster paced and more exciting to read.

At this point I'm at the final polishing stages because the submission deadline for my publisher is fast approaching. I think that I will go through the manuscript draft one final time before I package everything up and submit. I will hopefully hear positive news back in early 2026.

Thanks for stopping by.