It does not follow ... that every decent writer is a good editor. Even some justly famous writers are known in the trade for regularly filing dog's breakfasts that require many hours of labor on the other end: unpacking, parsing, cutting, shifting, reordering and so on. I feel for the editors whose working days are thus burdened, but what has made me try to be my own editor is more laziness than generosity. When I turn in a story, I want to be done with it.
My feeling, precisely. It is also worth noting that it works both ways: good editors don't necessarily make good writers, either. The worst editor is the one who wants to turn what you have written into the piece he would have written could he write.
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