The best editing I've ever done is invisible. I'll cut entire sections from scripts, remove lines from headlines, delete whole paragraphs from manifestos. When the work goes out, it's better. Nobody notices what's missing.
That's the point.
Good editing isn't about what you add. It's about what you remove.
I worked with a writer who was brilliant but undisciplined. First drafts were 800 words that should have been 300. My job was excavating the good bits from the rubble.
"You're destroying my voice," he'd complain.
"I'm finding your voice," I'd reply. "Right now it's buried under eighteen prepositional phrases and six parenthetical asides."
He hated me during edits. He loved me after publication.
Michelangelo said he didn't create David. He just removed the marble that wasn't David. That's editing.
But writers resist this. We fall in love with our phrases. I've learned to kill my darlings mercilessly.
The discipline is brutal: write everything, then cut everything that doesn't serve the central idea. What remains is leaner, faster, more powerful. Because I've removed the friction between the reader and the idea.