Not long ago, after months of what it must feel like to push a river upstream, I determined (with the generous comments from members of my writing group), that the structure I had been writing to wasn’t working for the story I wanted to tell. Square peg/round hole and all that.
So I chucked what might have been the first third of my book to start over, writing to a new structure which seems to fit the story better. At least so far. Just a month or so into the revision, it feels better. More flow-y, to continue the river metaphor.