Cathy C said:
Agreed. But this might just BE the opportunity to learn. Sometimes, it's easier to have someone point out a problem one time so you can correct it thereafter. A qualified editor of short stories can be an excellent teacher, because shorts are a very different sort of writing than anything else.
If you want to hire someone to teach you, a hired editor is the worst choice. The track record or hired editors producing salable fiction is abysmal, worse even that writers who never receive any instruction.
If you want to shell out money to learn, that money needs to go to professional writers who are also teachers, not to someone who is a hired editor. I have never, in all my years, encoutered a short story writer who ever advanced by using a hired editor. For that matter, hired editors generally do novelists no favors, either. The track record there is laughable.
If you want to learn how to write short stories that sell, the best way, by far, is to read as many as possible, and then to write as many as possible. The seond best way is to learn from a professional short story writer. People who can, do. People who can't call themselves hired editors.
Take a course, such as one of the Writer's Digest courses.
You do not learn by having someone else do something for you, and this is triply true when that someone else can't do it himself. You learn by doing it yourself. There is no other way. You get the right kind of help from a professional writer/teacher who does not, ever, for any reason, do it for you, but who does show you how to do it for yourself.
Learning is good, but hired editors are not a good way to learn. Just look around and see how many bylines you can find that come from writers who used hired editors. This istrue in the novel field, and even truer in teh short story field.
Editors, no matter who the editor is, cannot teach you how to write. It's not an editor's job to even know how to write. New writers seem very confused by what editors at publishing houses and magazines do. They do many things, but two things good editors never, ever do is rewrite a writer's work, or try to tell that writer how to write.
Hired editors exist only because there's a market. New writers are willing to give them money, so hired "editors" are willing to take it.
Learn, yes, but not by hiring an editor. Fired a qualified short story WRITER who will teach you how to do it for yourself. They abound.