“Rand, while a good writer of prose, was also a self indulgent writer and “over wrote” Atlas. “
She didn’t think anyone was qualified to edit her writing.
Yep. She didn't think anyone really understood it. Her editor at the time was none other than Bennett Cerf, who begged her to cut the "This Is John Galt Speaking" speech. Her reply was a masterpiece of modesty: "Would you cut the Bible?"
But she knew it was too long. She stated in an interview that she'd budgeted three months to write it and that it took two years. When Publius and I were doing the Book Club thread on it I found the thing so dense and tightly-written that it was extremely difficult to discern a structure. It was there, it was just that the thing had been polished so much at that point that you couldn't fit a dialectical wedge into the seams.
You wouldn't need a speech like that in a movie, and it's doubtful whether the novel needed it either to succeed as a novel. It was a major roadblock to the dramatic narrative, but from Rand's point of view the dramatic narrative existed to present the speech, and not the other way around.
You can sort of tell by the uneven quality of writing where she chose to focus her effort. Certain bits are lyrical and tragic - Eddie Willers' fate, for example. Others appear hastily-written and ludicrous - the scenes with Francisco shooting guns out of people's hands and Ragnar Danneskjold crashing through a window like Tarzan on steroids. Rand the philosopher wrote The Speech, Rand the novelist wrote the Willers dénouement, Rand the scriptwriter wrote the raid. IMHO, of course.