I mean it. Finish your draft before you dive into the editing process. You’d be amazed how many writing problems finishing a draft will solve.
Still, your instinct will tell you to ignore this piece of advice. This is the one time I’ll ever tell another human being to ignore their instinct about writing. Your gut will say “This sucks. Go back and change.” At least, it’ll feel like your gut and instinct. Really, that’s your self-doubt and quest for perfection talking.
I know you’ll want to go back and rework those opening sentences every time you sit down to write. It’s a trick, and it’ll keep you stuck in your writing and keep you from finishing.
Why must you finish your draft before editing? 
When you edit before finishing first, you change details before you know how they fit in the big picture of your story. Those little tweaks block the continuity of your writing. You’ll add this and that, and by the time you finally finish writing — if you even make it to editing — you’ll have changed so much, you’ll lose touch with the main thread of your book or story.
A change in the first chapter may require you to change something in chapter five and again in chapter twelve and then at the end of the book. If you haven’t written those chapters yet, you’ll be creating endless possible options for the future of your book not written. You create chaos in the center of your book
When you write the full first draft, flaws and all, you create a basic shape and structure for your writing. You develop rules for the world you’re writing and manageable limits for your plot and characters. Once you have those boundaries in place, you can begin to shape and restructure, add and delete, deepen and mold.
But if you don’t have your guideline in place, you’re just endlessly tweaking details and will never move closer to the end of your story.
I call this the trap of editing.
You can avoid it entirely by finishing your first draft before you edit. No, the first draft won’t be perfect. Some of what you write will be downright cringey. Don’t let those feelings of not being good enough trick you into an endless loop of editing but never finishing. There’s a reason we call it a Shitty First Draft!
Trust me on this one. Seriously. Create a mantra for yourself. Write it on a post it and stick it to your computer. Finish your draft before editing.
