Editing the Wrong Way? Or is There a Right or Wrong Way?

Much of the advice I have received on editing is along the lines of ‘get it all down on paper (or the screen) and then do all the editing afterwards’. And when people have said this, I have nodded absently. But the truth, Dear Reader, is that I don’t do this at all. I can certainly see the benefits of the get-it-all-down method. It saves time and the writer avoids falling down unnecessary rabbit-holes, editing wording and ideas which later on are deleted. It also allows him/her to develop a perspective of the whole story straight off. Obviously, a perfect writer would have planned his/her stories so well that he/she would already have that perspective before he/she started writing, but, hey-ho, I’m not perfect – are you? I can see that the get-it-all-down method may work well for shorter pieces, such as flash, but I wonder how get-it-all-downers cope when writing longer works. When...