So, here's something fun for you all. I finished the ninth revision of ELANTRIS last night, and out of curiosity, I wondered how much of the text had changed from the original version.
So, I dug out ELANTRIS 1.0 from four years ago, and used MS Word's 'Compare Documents' function.
Here's a grand shot--this is the entire novel shrunk down to 1pt font and put on a nine-page spread with all page breaks removed: (The stuff in red is new text, the stuff in white is old.)
http://www.brandonsanderson.com/graphics/elantrisedits.gifAnd, here are two shots of a 4pt, two-page spread. You can just barely make out single-letter changes on this one.
http://www.brandonsanderson.com/graphics/elantrisedits2.gifhttp://www.brandonsanderson.com/graphics/elantrisedits3.gifFinally, A zoom in close enough to see some words:
http://www.brandonsanderson.com/graphics/elantrisedits4.gifSo, it looks like about half of the text is new or changed. A lot of things have been renamed, and I think MS Word might have overestimated a bit. However, I'm glad THAT'S all behind me. (Whew.)
Hope I don't have do this many drafts for every book....