I got scammed and I don't know what to do with my text now
Okay so, a few years ago I got scammed by a "hybrid" publishing house (I was young and naive, and deeply lacked confidence so I thought I couldn't get a better deal), and even though they barely touched my text (as in they didn't use a human to "correct" it, leading to me having to re-correct everything because it was a mess), I still feel like they kind of ruined it, but I would also love to re-work this text, make it better and maybe publish it for real, but I don't know where to start, the more I read it the less I want to work on it because it feels like it was stollen from me...
Btw, I ended up calling off the deal with the publishing house so it was never published and they (supposedly) deleted every and any mention of my text in their files, so it's not supposed to be available to anyone else but me. Just saying that in the end they didn't pulish it and I'm the sole owner of the text.
Overall I love the characters and even though some things need to be changed for the story to make more sense/be more interesting, I really think it could be a good book.
So, if anyone has any idea to make this text feel like mine again, I'm really desperate at this point...
(Sorry for any mistake, English isn't my first language 😄)
(Sorry x2 if this is an inappropriate post, I just want to keep writing this book but I don't know how to do it...)