Rewrites

How long should you give to a rewrite? In financial terms, as little as possible. Short stories never pay well and unless you can turn them over pretty fast, you're not going to get much out of it.
But when you get an email back from a fiction ed. saying, 'we love it but can you cut it, edit it, change the pace ...' - well, what's a perfectionist writer to do? You're halfway to a sale!
Two things - one, you are proving yourself to that editor, and getting yourself more work. Two, you are working on your craft and that's never wasted. Oh, and let's add three - when you're tired, it's easier to edit than to create from scratch!
So I always edit, no matter how long it takes. Finally sent off the rewrite yesterday and I thought it was notably better than my first go. My hero moved from the second page to make his initial appearance in paragraph three; and my emotional storyline was simplified.
My recent way of simplifying is to see the plot in scenes, as if it were a drama. You may have linking paragraphs, but if you try to squeeze too many scenes into a short story, it becomes confusing and bitty, too much of 'and then ... and then ...' So this story was reduced to three meetings between hero and heroine before the happy ending, even though the timeline covered several months and told us what happened for a year before.
Now to wait for the email of ... acceptance?