Welcome to the community!
How did I start?
Summary
I was on Reddit spending a lot of money on a visual novel called Choices and someone there mentioned hey you should try a game called Wayheaven, it doesn’t have graphics but it’s the same make your own choices type of game. That was like 2020 I think, It was my first time ever hearing about Choices of game or Hosted Games. so I bought book one read it then book 2, and mid-book 2 which I never finished lol I was like Huh! I want to do that. That’s such a cool process writing a story and letting the reader interact with it. So I join the forum and started learning how to code with Choicescript, and two years later, My first book is in the queue for being published and I already started writing book 2.
All that to say… go for it, start yesterday, continue today, and don’t stop tomorrow. It’s not going to be easy, you’re going to feel down sometimes, and if you’re like most of us, you’re going to hate your writing and story sometimes, but there’s a Writer support thread here just for that.
It will take however long you want it to. I have a full-time job and only write on late nights and most weekends (and I don’t have a social life. There’s even a sign on my door that says, "Shoo… go away, I’m not interested.) So it really depends on how fast you write, how dedicated you are, and life-work balance thing.
It took me over a year to write 350,000 words. So again, each person is different I know some writers who can write 40,000 words in a day or a week.
As for advice, below is what I wish I knew before starting lol