acts of composition
by uzwi
If To Kill A Mockingbird originated as some sort of back narrative inside the larger structure Go Set A Watchman (and it did, and now we know that we can’t unknow it) then Go Set A Watchman is neither a prequel nor a sequel but part of another kind of structure altogether. When the book appears, the complexities of this distinction, including the possibility that many actual prequels and sequels may have originated in a similar but unrecorded process, might be worth an article in themselves. Distinctions like this undermine generalising terminology and force us to return not just to the individual book but the individual act of composition.
the m john harrison blog 
This reminds me, in a way, of experiencing a serial narrative out-of-order, which was always my favorite way to read comics as a child, but now seems anathema to the tevee-watcher. It used to be that disjointed reading opened up interstices for the reader to compose their own narrative, but now it seems to me to call into question of *which* specific chapter the arc was written for, and whether the author(s) could even hazard a guess.