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Recently, I hired a developmental editor to read my synopsis and the first 4,000 words of my story (first page is above). These first pages often require multiple rewrites.
Perhaps you've never analyzed the first line or first chapter much, but there is tracked and subtle psychology at work here. My job as a writer is to "hook" without you noticing, "Ah, I see what you did there," or pause because too much/little info is pulling you out of the story.
As I slog through revisions, I needed some reassurance that this trail I'm forging is not completely off-course.
The feedback I received was both a blessing and a burden. Now that I have a professional editor pointing out that I'm being "reasonably clever, but still sneaking in too much backstory", I can't unsee it. The challenge will be to finish my draft as planned (I'm 3/4 done), and resist going back to the beginning and getting sucked into another revision loop.
On the plus side, the editor complimented my "solid quality sample":
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”I have made just over 100 marginal comments . . . I often have to make four times that number.””
It was gratifying to hear that all my previous years of writing, drafting, revising, attending writer's conferences, studying craft books, reading my genres with a critical eye, critiquing other authors, that now-distant four-year English Literature degree... I may not be a polished, published fiction writer yet, but the pudding is showing some "proof", anyway.
The trick is in the doing, and I've got a lot of doing left.