Why do editors do everything the hard way?

I suppose it’s a good step in my career, but I’m getting tired of editors telling me how difficult it was to pass up my story only to do it anyway.  They are encouraging notes each time, but several editors have said that about several of my recent subs.  These are the “personalized rejections” I heard tales of for so long, and now I’m getting them, but why can’t they take the easy way out an run my stories?

The good news is that I am repeatedly assured that editors like my writing style and voice and characters.  For a long time I worried these would be the things that stood in my way.  Heck, I’m still not 100% sure what voice is; it’s certainly not something I do intentionally.  Just like I was told for years, style and voice are things that evolved with experience.  They just got better, to the point that people (editors and others) make it a point to comment on them.

I think it’s time to focus on macro stuff again, the way I did early in my writing career.  Plot.  Character motivation.  I have a screenwriting book that might help remind me of things I used to do better back when style and voice were…not strengths.  Maybe I never was better at them, but the other stuff was bad enough that they were the bright spots.  Whatever the case, I am soooo close I can smell the success.  A little more attention to connecting the big dots and I think the pro sales will start drizzling in.  Fingers crossed (which makes difficult typing).

Oh, and DSF was the latest to make the “difficult decision not to publish” FS.  But they want me to send more, and more I got.  Which one…?