Learning how to be a writer can be daunting, because ‘writing’ is not one job. It’s dozens. It’s characters, and world-building, and plot, and pacing, and dialogue, and action, and description, and editing, and the thought of mastering those all at the same time can be really intimidating. I’ve taught hundreds of writing classes and I meet a lot of young people who just don’t know where to start.
But the thing to remember is that nobody starts off writing full novels, or great masterpieces. There are a million tiny steps between your first story and your greatest masterpiece, and for me, the first step was fan fiction.