They're as different as...a trip to a waterpark and gardening.

In this particular metaphor I'll let writing be water. Both the waterpark and the garden are built around water -- try making a go of either without it -- but completely different kinds of "fun".

The process of putting down a first draft is a lot like a day at the waterpark. Your only goal is a series of slippery thrills. You arrive all excited, and the first third of the day is nothing but woo-hoo! Can't wait to get to the top of the slide. Fast 'n fun and it flashes by in a blur. Middle third of your visit you start to realize that you're getting hungry, so you stuff some junk food and head back to the wave pool, which isn't quite as fun as the first time you bobbed in it. Inevitably, you get tired. I usually end my days unable to face any more lines and instead choose a couple circuits around the lazy river, wondering how such small children can crank out noise like 300 watt-per channel speakers without being wired to a pre-amp.

By the end I'm some mixture of sunburned, wrinkled, sun-drunk, alcohol-drunk, fun-drunk, and utterly exhausted. I can't stand the thought of returning to the waterpark -- please, anything but another ride down that chute! That's drafting a novel.

Revising is working a garden. Your goal is to make something pleasing, lasting, perhaps even bountiful. Mostly its slaughter of weeds -- unnecessary adverbs, tinny dialog, pointless scenery. There's a good deal of nursing of your best blooms, hoping that the flowers you planted blossom appropriately. It's tedious, painstaking, repetitious, dirty, and at times frustrating when your seeds refuse to germinate properly. For much of it only joy is a grim, hardworking, Calvinistic sort.

The difference comes at the end. When the gardening is done properly, there's no greater joy than returning to the scene of all that work, enjoying what blossoms you did manage to produce, and maybe finding new hidden bits of beauty that cropped up unexpectedly. Not everything is ideal; there's a bit of wilt, or fungus, a few slugs, but only Allah can make a perfect rug, after all.

Thats's where I am with VE#4 right now. Gardening. I found two bare patches that I need to fill, there's still some weeding, and my flowers need a lot more water -- but some of them are open. It's grown a bit and starting to come together.