You share lots of good insights here, Gregory. I especially like that several times you mention editing. I call it revision, but it’s the same process , and in many ways even more important than writing the first draft. I actually enjoy revision and feel that I would never feel a poem is complete without lots of it. Often you have to make hard choices during revision. I have very often had to let go of lines and verses that I really liked in the first draft, just because they no longer worked in the poem once it had been revised. In all writing you have to learn to trust your decisions of what to alter, what to cut, and what to leave, exactly as you originally conceived it.