Goodreads asked Virgil Allen Moore:

What’s your advice for aspiring writers?

Virgil Allen Moore Do you have an idea? Write it out. Do you think it'll turn out bad? Oh, it will. Don't worry about that for now. Just write it out. Because it will have errors. It will have issues. It will have things you will later be either ashamed of or embarrassed about. So whatever the concept, write it out to get it out. You'll need to stumble before you can walk. And after you get through it, you'll need to start again with another idea to learn how to walk. It'll fail too. But after that, you can start to jog, you'll stumble a few times again, but after a few broken bones from the words of others, you'll start to run. And it's then that you'll begin to shine. Writing will become easier and natural.
This takes time. Some say that becoming a master takes 10,000 hours. That's not true for a writer. Our measure of mastery is numbered in wordcount. For the first 30k, it's painful. Until you break 100k, you'll rethink everything you write. Then until you get to 250k, you'll want to write out some of your best ideas. Don't write them all out. Save some for later. When you get to 500k, you'll feel near bulletproof. But when you reach 1 Million total words written in story form, you'll be able to consider yourself a writer and absolutely no one will be able to tell you otherwise. Get to 1 Million wordcount and you'll have made it.

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