: Re: Writing as a hobby, where do you learn the basics and go further? Sorry if I use the wrong terms or make a wrong assumption. I consider myself a beginner, and I know that I still have to

@RJPawlick285

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I want to share a piece of advice I found very helpful from author Beverly Cleary (author of The Mouse and the Motorcycle, Henry and Ribsy, and many others).
It comes in the form of a comment in her Newberry Medal winning book Dear Mr. Henshaw. To put it in context, the main character, sixth grader Leigh Botts, has just won honorable mention in the Young Writer's Yearbook and is meeting a real (fictional) author. (Bolding added.)

"Oh!" said Mrs. Badger. "So you're the author of A Day on Dad's Rig!"
Everyone was quiet. None of us had known the real live author would have read what we had written, but she had and she remembered my title.
"I just got honorable mention," I said, but I was thinking, She called me an author. A real live author called me an author.
"What difference does that make?" asked Mrs. Badger. "Judges never agree. I happened to like A Day on Dad's Rig because it was written by a boy who wrote honestly about something he knew and had strong feelings about. You made me feel what it was like to ride down a steep grade with tons of grapes behind me."
"But I couldn't make it into a story," I said, feeling a whole lot braver.
"Who cares?" said Mrs. Badger with a wave of her hand. She's the kind of person who wears rings on her forefingers. "What do you expect? The ability to write stories comes later, when you have lived longer and have more understanding. A Day on Dad's Rig was splendid work for a boy your age. You wrote like you, and you did not try to imitate someone else. This is one mark of a good writer. Keep it up."

Now, you have lived longer than a sixth grader, and hopefully you have more understanding. But the advice still applies.
What I learned from this was that it's more important to write than to write a story.

Another author, from the era of the pulps, commented that no writer knows whether or not he has a style until he has sat down and written a couple of hundred thousand words. And then from that writing, a style would probably emerge or be detectable.
That couple of hundred thousand words was intended as a couple months' worth of work, not years, to give you an idea of the quantity that is meant by the oft-heard advice, "If you want to be a writer, you should WRITE."
Remember also that the writers in the days of the pulps wrote their manuscripts on typewriters. That meant if you wanted to revise a section of your story, you would have to retype the whole page.
My advice to you is: Stop worrying about drafts, stop worrying about revising, stop worrying about what people online think or how other people write, and write enough quantity to find out how you write.

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