I r srs riter, I r revising

Reading another book on writing: Revision, by Kit Reed. Opened with some little trepidation, because as a pre-teen I read a Kit Reed story that scarred me for years. (I've just spent 10 minutes with the wonderful Index to SF Anthologies, and I think the story may have been called 'Winston') Even when I bought Other Stories and Attack of the Giant Baby, I read with my eyes half-closed, ready to flinch away.
Fortunately, this is non-fiction. Originally I picked it up to recommend to the writer I was prepping a critique for last week, but I'm finding it interesting for myself. I skimmed the first two chapters, which are openly intended to convince a beginning writer that Revision Is Necessary, because I belong to that weird subgroup that believes Revision Is Fun.
Lately I've been trying to puzzle out what separates one draft from another draft. I mean, at what point do you say you're now working on a 3d draft rather than continuing to fix the 2d draft? I get that the first draft is when you actually have some form of the whole story down, even if bits are more notes-to-oneself than actual narrative. But after that? Where's the split between 3d and 4th? Should I be rewriting the entire story, start to finish, every time?

Reed's chapter 3 gave me a clue about my own revision, um, system. She differentiates between

1. Draft writing, draft revision. The draft writer gets out a first draft without stopping to look back and make changes. Revision comes in subsequent drafts.
2. Block construction, or; revising as you go. The writer using block construction revises sentence by sentence, progressing slowly through a story of novel to what is essentally a polished version.
Add to these first two major types of revision, a third. This one takes place after the story or novel exists in more or less complete form. It is:
3. Revision to strengthen structure and story. ... This third type of revision comes after you think you're finished.

I know I turn out a pretty clean first draft. I realise that the superficial smoothness can mask structural problems. And I've been fidgetty when general discussions of problems with first drafts tend to concentrate on fixing surface messiness.
Reed's discussion of the advantages of 'block construction' sound very close to what I enjoy, especially the 'running head start' of tidying yesterday's work to build up speed for the next bit of story.
I'm not quite a match, because I'll also jump ahead in the narrative to write a scene that's in my head, while I still have it fresh. But I'm getting so many little sparks of 'oh yes!' reading about block construction that it's a bit exciting. After all I've read about coshing your internal editor to get the first draft down, and dreadful warnings about writers who endlessly polish their first pages or first chapters and never complete a book, I've felt somewhat defensive about my friendly relationship with my inner editor. As long as I can keep her from dithering, she's quite helpful.

Revision is on my mind because I've received a request to rewrite a story, and have a file of editorial comments and suggestions. Just as if I were a professional writer & stuff! Speed up the opening, fill out the ending, change the commas to house style. And change the title.

I think I will look at my old copies of Boy's Own Annual etc., to get the correct feel, because this is the Chimps story.
Here's some sample story titles from a boy's annual of 1928:

• Dangerous Cargo
• The First Grenadier of France
• Coward of the Lost Legion
• Del Oro's Luck
• Two Miles a Minute
• When the War God Walked Again
• The Mystery of the Malakai Light
• The Riddle of the River
• To Rescue the King
• The Red God's Call

Or perhaps the titles of articles might be more fruitful?

• How I Flew from New York to Paris
• My Most Thrilling Air Experience
• Sentenced to the Hulks
• Twenty-five Thousand Miles in an Eight-ton Boat
• And Then I Jumped

With a little work, I could rearrange those into a flashfic. But revision comes first. And tidying the cat.
As Priscilla Fluffycat loses her winter coat, brushing her is no longer sufficient. She must be combed, combed with a fine tooth, which makes her puff out like a seeding dandelion and become surpassingly plushy.
She's afraid of the vacuum noise, though, so that's out.

Probably a bigger woodchipper

Would be needed to dispose of a body. The one we rented this weekend, while too large to be transported in the back of the van (without laying it down, which would spill fuel) was only suitable for blackberry vines and rose cuttings.
I can't say much for the design of the woodchipper. It's not the sort you see in films, where you could pretty much shovel in whatever you like. That sort has to be hitched to a vehicle. Ours was a little beastie, hardly above waist-height, with a rectangular opening at the top and a funnel at the side. At first I took the funnel for the outlet, but it's the feeder for larger things. The outlet is a vent at the base, which chokes up after a while so that the heavy & unwieldy chipper must be awkwardly wheeled a few feet away from the chip-pile it's made.
The design is almost anti-ergonomic. Unless it's meant to be operated by prepubescent children, the feeder height requires bending over constantly.
In the two hours before it ran out of fuel, we did greatly reduce the slash-piles stacked around the back yard, and produce a few buckets of sawdust mulch for the roses. But most of that was done through the side-funnel, rather than the top opening, which proved nearly useless, even for the small cuttings, twigs and leaves.
The side funnel is a lot of fun to use. You feed one end of a vine into it, and once it catches, the whole vine whips in, waving about like a retracting Triffid. But any projecting stub of vine (you know, the natural way that both blackberries and roses grow) can catch on the funnel edge and leave it vibrating blurrily instead of entering the grinder.
After an hour, I was vibrating somewhat blurrily myself, especially about the hands, and my gloves were speckled with those blackberry thorns that hadn't managed to reach my skin. So I wasn't terribly regretful when the fuel ran out. Our neighbours may have been relieved as well. It's not a sleek purring machine.
I suppose anyone who reads mysteries (or watches trashy movies) would think of body disposal while using a woodchipper. I'd recommend the bigger size.
It occurs to me that the development of dna tech has made forensics less interesting rather than more. I was impressed by the detective who spotted a kidney stone (gallstone?) mixed in with the gravel of a garden path, and with the story of a murderer who woodchipped his victim and aimed the vent out over a river, but was defeated by the discover of a single tooth.

Rhubarb and roses
The rhubarb has leapt up in the last weeks. Whee, she said feebly, I like rhubarb. Maybe I'll make more pies.
And transplant the volunteer sweet rocket into the front yard, under the bay window where it's hard to grow things.
And prune the roses over the front gate, the part that needs a stepladder. The Adelaide d'Orleans is healthy enough, but the one on the other side of the arch may be dead (I'm still cutting back) and I can't find its nametag or remember what its blooms looked like when last seen. I'm wondering if the blooms I vaguely remember were the Adelaide spilling over to the other side?
I've cut back the garage-swallowing alba in the backyard (hmm, maybe I should take a cutting of the alba and see if it would grow where the unknown arch-rose is giving up?), and in the front made some inroads on the sprawling Dortmund, the Bourbon Queen, and the Rosearie de la Haye.
I've barely touched the Wenlock, which remains healthy despite the shadow of the boulevard trees. The Jacques Cartier and Alain Blanchard are holding up, but another three are pretty feeble. Stupid shade. Okay, not to be ungrateful for Victoria's urban forest, but I'd rather have an ornamental cherry or something else that dropped pink petals than dusty catkins and aphid juice.

The frame of the old cable-ride is beside the Dortmund, and I've thought about hanging a basket-chair from it (I have a hanging chair lying in the attic, waiting for a frame strong enough) but I don't know whether I could keep the vines away from the chair. One doesn't want to swing idly into thorns. The other end of the cable-ride has a lilac tree growing into it, but at least it wouldn't be thorns. I've cut back some of the lilac, but tentatively.
While my thumbs are far from green, I rather like pruning. It's like editing. Ooh, that bit doesn't need to be there ... LOP! Just as when I'm editing, it's far easier for me to trim out a clearly dead bit than it is to remove something vigorous but in the wrong place, even with the promise of a more satisfying shape to come.
Editing, like body disposal, is in my thoughts just now because I'm reading some work that needs pruning. I've colour-coded my high-lighters: blue for hackneyed language, green for confusing, pink for punctuation and typos, and yellow for superfluous. It's not quite Fanthorpian levels of repetition, but enough that I'm covering 1/2 to 2/3 of each page with yellow.
I need to buy another yellow highlighter. This one's dying, and the woodchipper isn't fine-tuned enough.

comparative earnings

From my fiction writing I've made $90, from the sale of a short story (novelet).
I was once asked to edit (not copy edit, but editing for flow and style) the opening chapters of a novel, for which I was paid $50. I'd contracted informally for $40, so that was a nice surprise.
I was once commissioned to calligraph and paint a page of parchment in manuscript style, an anniversary gift for which I was paid $700 (materials included).

So, for my second career, which should I pick? Not that I'm quitting my day job, which I rather enjoy. I'd say painting, but I may have exhausted the market for pastiches of East Anglian illumination.