which is quicker: 1. Cleaning everything up and then finding your story is too big... so doing structural changes... which need to be cleaned up 2. Doing structural changes and then cleaning up a much much smaller amount of text

I have had to relegate two (large) mss to the bottom drawer because of the amount of work needed to knock them into shape. For one it was a major structural change, for the other it needed cleaning up and maybe a change from third person to first.
I have another which has ground to a halt at 60K because of potential structural problems in the final third, and it was best to stop at that point and replan it, than to continue and find it had gone off on the wrong tangent. At least I can come back to it at some point.
Tbh, usually it is easier to start something new than to drastically rework something old.


- NaomiM

<Added>

As far as certain types of cleaning up are concened - eg, the taking out of two adverbs, where one will do, taking out additional description, I find most writers split into 2 groups: Those that bung everything into the first draft, and can easily cut 40% without harming the mss. And those - like me - who start with the basic armature, and go over and over it building up the layers. I would have to cut out whole scenes to reduce the word count.