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I wrote a couple of novels, never got published though
For me, the big thing was participating in National Novel Writing Month. If you're not familiar, NaNoWriMo takes place in November, and it's a community where people get together to try writing a 50,000 word novel in 30 days. It's become pretty commercial now, but the key thing that seemed to keep people going was community and routine.
If you don't take any days off, that's 1667 words every day. That came out to about three pages in my word processor, and I thought three pages was pretty doable. The routine helped get over some writer's block I'd been struggling with, and it's something that has been repeated often as advice from famous authors.
Taking a day off made it a lot harder the next day. Not just for making up the word count, because I'd take a day off only if I was ahead of quota. But when your momentum comes to a rest it becomes a lot harder to kick off the motivation. So the trick if you want to do it is to do it, but then you gotta do it or you won't do it.
Another thing to keep in mind - your writing doesn't have to be good. In fact, it's pretty encouraged to spit out garbage if it keeps you writing because you can edit it later. If you edit as you go and try to skip the drafting process, it's like trying to do two things at once - both things suffer for it. In retrospect, editing was probably the more challenging part of writing.
That is basically how I wrote my bachelor's thesis right before the deadline: just sit down and write write write, then start the next day by editing the text from the previous day and again write write write. You do need to have an inkling of what you want to say, but otherwise it's a great way to keep going.
Edit: also, there are plenty of famous fiction writers who don't draft a book, but just start with an idea and see where it takes them. Obviously, this doesn't work for everyone or every book, but it's a valid way of working.
Oh yeah, I should have been more clear: editing as you go is a totally valid way to do it. It's generally how I prefer to write (why write it twice if I can write it once?), but some people can really struggle with it.
Whether it's in the moment or retrospectively, any professional work probably should be edited. I have found that editing in the moment or even yesterday's work causes me to miss things. There's certainly something to be had by letting things percolate and then reviewing with fresh eyes.
Starting was always the hardest part for me. Editing yesterday's work was a good way to get over writer's block. Another trick I liked was when I finished for a session it was sometimes helpful to end in the middle of a sentence. Starting from nothing is hard, but even just finishing an incomplete thought can get the ball rolling.
Good points!
Also, don't worry too much about the writing itself, about whether it's good in a technical sense. There are plenty of successful authors who aren't great writers, but they are great storytellers, and that's the most important part.