After I struggled last time to pick up writing from the middle of the scene without re-reading the first half, I decided to try the other approach today. I re-read the scene from the beginning before adding on.
As anticipated, I could not resist the urge to edit parts of it as I went. Perhaps later, that will be part of my process. I know there are some writers who edit the previous day’s work before starting the next, and I can certainly see some benefit to that. After letting the scene percolate in my head from the previous day, I can see areas for improvement and fleshing out of descriptions. However, at this point in my career, I am not confident that each scene will even continue to exist in its current state in the final version of the story. I don’t want to spend too much time polishing a scene that is ultimately going to be eliminated, so for now, I’m going to try to finish the rough draft before editing.
After the editing touches, I barely managed my 500-word target, but I got there, and finished the scene, which means that next time I won’t have something to reread before I get started. Hopefully that will help with efficiency.