W is for...words, words, words

Hello everyone, welcome back to the A to Z Blogging Challenge. Apologies if I don't manage to get through as many blogs as normal today, as I've somehow managed to kill the Engineer's Macbook, so I'm on the desktop and it's taking me a while to remember how to use it. Don't worry though, I'll definitely visit more bloggers tomorrow :).

So today's post is all about the wonderful, wacky letter 'W'.

This is probably quite an obvious post, but to be honest, the only thing you need to be a writer is...words.

Sounds simple doesn't it? Whack a few thousand words down and BAM! You've got yourself a novel. Well, if we can ignore the endless revisions and editing that finally makes a novel readable, then yes, that is the essence of it. You can't be an author unless you write, and you can't write without words.

About ninety percent of your words will suck, especially in the few stages of your novel. But that's okay - every single writer feels like their novel is rubbish. But you know what? At least you've started on that wonderful journey to becoming an author - you've finally started to use your words to express that idea in your head, no matter how crazy that story might be.

There is a quote floating around somewhere that says once you've finished your first draft, you've written 80,000 words more than you would have done, had you not started that particular novel i.e. you're a writer who's 80,000 words better than the writer you were before (does that make sense? I feel like it makes sense to me, but sorry if I'm not writing it in the best way!).

I love that idea - every time we write, we're improving as authors - no matter how badly our words look on the page. And that idea gives me a lot of hope :).

How about you? Do you find it easy to just 'get the words down'? Do you think you've become a better author than from when you first started? I'd love to hear your thoughts!