Karl Whitney:  You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll hurl: writing a first draft is never easy

The first draft doesn’t need to be perfect. It’s about preserving the flow of the text rather than getting everything right first time

It’s tempting, then, to think that the writer, when editing and reshaping their own work, should put on a different hat, one that’s somewhere between the critic and the editor.

Writing is mostly a matter of putting everything in its correct place; it attracts those who tinker and prevaricate. 

Perhaps the practice also stirs up such tendencies in people who, had they not become writers, would have gone about their business in the world with a clear head, untroubled by said urge to tinker and prevaricate.