Editing--wonder what that's like

Editing is one stage of writing I have never been able to make it to. Perhaps it is because editing is against my nature. Go back and look over everything again when finishing it the first time almost killed you? I distinctly remember my sixth grade teacher once saying, "Don't be afraid to revise. Don't fall so deeply in love with every sentence you write that you can't bring yourself to change it." But what's wrong with getting it right the first time? Is perfection such a crime?

Of course I don't presume to believe that my writing is anywhere near perfect. Or that every single sentence I write is a masterpiece. But after I finish a paper or a story, it is as though my mind settles into an irreversible complacency and refuses to reopen the case. Even if this sentence rambles on for one third of the page. Or if this paragraph contains more color adjectives than the back of a Crayola box. My mind always manages to whip up an excuse that sounds so persuasive, so reasonable to someone whose laziness prevents her from throwing used tissues away until the Mount Everest of processed paper pulp emerges. "No, no, no, that sentence needs to run twenty lines because it is the part where Bob's reasons for stealing the shopping cart from a nearby grocery store finally come to the surface" or "Of course there are fifty two color adjectives in there! How else would you capture the essence of a unicorn?"

Or perhaps I have managed to combine the processes of writing and editing into one agonizing, blood-sucking procedure that leaves the writer incapacitated for weeks afterwards. Does that explain why it takes me fifteen minutes to write a single sentence?