"As a writer, you should not judge, you should understand." Ernest Hemingway I take this to mean people... of course... but also characters. If you don't understand your characters (especially your antagonists), you're in trouble. Because if you don't understand them, your reader will not understand them, and they will put down your book... But this is also about subjects. The worst case of judging is soap-boxing.

"The first draft of anything is shit" Hemingway via Samuelson? A short explanation: No writer will produce a perfect first draft. Instead, we do our best in the first draft and then polish (or reconstruct) in editing/rewriting. So your first draft is totally allowed to be shit. Beautiful flowers grow from shit.....