Editing your manuscript is like sharpening a pencil.
You look at the tip and you say that it’s blunt, so you stick it in the sharpener and begin to twist.
Your hand gets a cramp and your fingers get stained with shredded graphite and little curls of wood fall all over the carpet and make a mess.
You look at the pencil and you think it could be sharper.
You twist and twist and twist until finally it is almost as sharp as it could possibly be.
Almost.
There’s that one little part that is stopping it from being the perfect point . . .
You think you’ll just give it one or two more twists.
The point breaks off and you are left with something you cannot use.

The moral: Like the point of the pencil, you will never get your story perfect. You will always find things wrong with it, always want to rewrite it and edit it. If you give into this temptation to give it one or two more twists, you will ultimately end up mutilating or completely robbing your manuscript of any point, rhyme, or reason . . . or readability, for that matter. Leave well enough alone, and settle for less than perfect – because you are never going to get “perfect” anyway.