Help me out here

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I love writing stories as a hobby, and I like to be particular about it.

In the past year or so I've been writing my own "soap" but in story form, about fictional highschoolers. I've been writing them in writing pads, and I had a few separate pieces of papers with a brief description of each chapter written on, and also the information about the characters so that I don't forget. On the front of each writing pad I drew a good front cover, containing the main characters. Each writing pad resembles a year.

But there is one problem. I'm half way through writing the chapters in these writing pads, and now suddenly I'm not happy with some of the story plots and a few of the characters, and I want to change them. So I was thinking of starting a fresh and writing them all out again on the computer, including the chapter descriptions and character information.

But that would mean typing out what I have written so far, which is quite a lot, and it will be time-consuming. Also I spent a lot of time illustrating the front covers of my writing pads.
What do you think I should do? Should I write them all out again on the computer the way I want? I'm not planning on printing them out if I do write them on the computer, although I might but it would take up a lot of paper and ink. I suppose I could call the hand-written stories in the writing pads "drafts". So do you think it's a good idea to type them all up on the computer, or would it make all the work I done in the writing pads a waste of time and paper?

The fact that you have drawn beautiful pics on the covers of these little notebooks, or pads, is totally irrelevant.

you're not creating visual art. You are writing a novel of some kind.

Every successful author will tell you that: the author's best friend is ….the waste basket!

If I were you I would get on the computer and start writing this stuff, but write it all in the current form in your head , which would be revived from how you have it in these books, rather than going through an unnecessary phase of slavishly copying what you already wrote.

And then when you're done. Delete THAT draft liberally, and start over again again, and keep revising it until you get your finished draft.

Thanks, that sounds a good idea.

Every writer goes through what you go through.

Do you want to hang out with people so you can get material for your writing? That might be a good idea. My writing probably suffers because of my disinclination to hang out with many people.

I always write my first draft by hand in a notebook, but I only use one side of the page. That way I can cross stuff out and write new things on the blank page opposite. It's the only way I can get to my second draft without losing my storylines. The second draft goes into the laptop from there and on to a flash drive, one book to a drive.

natural plastic has the right idea. go for it.

I always type on a computer. Faster and easier, for me. I touch type and am pretty fast. Handwriting is painful. Also easier to edit and you can save drafts which spares one the existential terror of throwing out your best work.

I'd advise to keep the notepads for reference, but start the rewrites on your computer fresh, without directly transferring anything that you've since reconsidered how to handle. The idea being to not waste time recreating redundant material.

I've been there with my novel type project, only minus the artwork. Definitely keep the artwork if it's still relevant, even if it's not it's likely valuable on a sentimental level.

Few first drafts are the final draft. Rewriting might be a pain in the ass, but it's still an important part of writing.

It should be too difficult to scan in your artwork into your document. Many printers today are also scanners.

I might just take a picture on my phone of the drawing, then put it on to my computer to go with the story. When I write stories I always like to have a front cover.

Thank you everyone for posting in my thread. Writing is my hobby.