A Sci-Fi author (can't remember the name now) once used the Rule of 50%:
50% of people who want to write never do.
Of that, 50% who start, never finish.
Of that, 50% who do, never revise.
And so on until only a sliver of the original group is actually submitting stuff.
Just by completing a novel, you are well ahead of the majority. And once it's complete, you can polish it as many times as you need until it shines. But you will have completed it and that is a huge, huge step.
Thanks for that praise and advice. I made it until the 3rd 50%. As I was going through the first edit of that first book, I realized it was massively full of holes, egregiously purple, and lacked any voice, interesting dialogue, or style. I rushed through it, and I didn't plan it. But damn did I learn a ton, especially that I am one of those that probably should be planning their plots and characters better. Also, I need to work on my writing style A LOT.
Working up vocab, looking for interesting voice and grammatical structures in reading, writing things and getting honest feedback in SYW and betas. Making character and plot synopsis before getting too deep in writing scenes. Gonna take a while but damn, I think I would much rather write for a living than do what I do now and if it takes me a year (or years) and thousands of hours to learn to make my writing something people want to read, I'll take that time.