I can assure you: you are not a failure!!
The kind of revisions suggested in the How to Write books would be minor, trivial, simple.
Sometimes though I object to replacing stuff like "She was standing there" with "She stood there."

In most cases it's easy to see where replacing the was + -ing is better, but in a lot of cases, it messes with the pentameter and the exposition.

Workshops can be dangerous. Be well fortified and shield yourself from the onslaught. My prose was polished and even poetic, but I'm not into formula fiction and most movies and novels annoy me with contrived conflict or dumb stuff I can't allow my characters to do, because I'm like a protective mother who won't let her teenager set off on a mission to take down the local sex traffickers.... let the trained adults handle it, kid! And women with stalkers, DO NOT GO HOME ALONE, but they all do. sigh
They just don't listen to me LOL.