The primary illusion is of ease. Simple as that. That's all an editor wants. And the fact that every editor is going to define that simple phrase in a different way is not a problem, not really. Publication in, say, The New Yorker, is the equivalent of singing with the Metropolitan Opera.
Good writing is, among many other things, an illusion.
The primary illusion is of ease. I see student drafts that were written twenty years past. In these cases, learning has stopped. In these cases writing has stopped. If you're that devoted to a single piece of writing, it will be very hard to hear criticism.