my experience: a first novel takes 3+ drafts (i.e. complete rewrites) to get decent. That's not a happy factoid. You WANT to be done earlier than that. ...I'm just telling you what I believe to be the cold hard truth.
rewrite vs revise is not a crisp distinction, but a continuum I agree that something can be reworked so much as to kill the life...but I ALSO think that some people use that as an excuse to under-revise