Funny. Editing is by far my biggest problem in my process. Everytime I sit down in an attempt to make it clearer and more precise, to chip away the excess, I end up with pages and pages more, with maybe three renditions of six or seven paragraphs that I equally like, besides notes jotted everywhere and new files started on subjects oblique to my main points. A hoarder. 

My first experience with an editor was in '91, a magazine in New England called "Patterns." It was just a collection of what I felt were incredibly insightful pity sayings that would change any soul that read them and eventually the world. They were accepted with enthusiasm and published without any discussion. As I wrote it, this incredibly insightful pitthy saying should have read, 'Surrender, not self-improvement." What was published was the opposite of my intent: "Surrender not self-improvement." 

Recently, I sent an unorganized collection of writing (the other part of editing I don't get, which probably disqualifies me as claiming "Writer") by invitation to a respected voice in the spiritual community that had his own publishing company. It seemed more than abundantly plain to me that when I wrote about "the Little Child," which I was certain he would recognize from the verse in the Bible, "Turn, and become as little children," it would be understood in its metaphorical meaning. It was not. "I'm done with this guy," was my righteously indignant thought. I never followed up. Er, maybe I was too hasty.

I have been working on a book for twenty-nine years. That should tell you a lot about my editing prowess.