How do I grow from a decent editor into a real one?

You can cut a clean sequence now, which is a solid foundation. What exposes you are the projects that need real craft, where technical correctness is not enough and the edit has to feel like something. That gap is the line between competent and artful, and everyone who crosses it stands where you are first. Craft is not more technique; it is feeling and intention. A crafted edit controls rhythm, emotion, and attention, choices you make on purpose, not just clean cuts. That sense grows by studying edits that move you and asking why they work, frame by frame, until the invisible choices become visible. Take one scene you admire from a film or video and study it closely: where the cuts fall, how long shots hold, how it makes you feel and why. Then try to bring one of those choices into your own work. Craft is built by absorbing it deliberately, one borrowed choice at a time.