Jeffrey, if people haven’t learnt the fundamentals of good writing by the age of 13, it is unlikely that they have the talent necessary to write professionally. Certainly, they can do marketing or advertising, but that only requires good language skills. Creative writing, and the kind of analytical thinking that good writers bring to the platform are a very different kettle of fish. It cannot be taught. You either have it or you don’t.

I suppose if I was less cynical, I might buy it that Ev Williams is preparing newbie writers to write well, but I am not inclined to believe that.

Let’s look at some figures.

Some 84% of Americans seriously believe that they can write a book, and many of them think that this is going to be a bestselling book. I lost count of the number of people who approached me to write their life story or this story or that for them. They had all the details. It just remained for me to put it together for them (all without pay, of course), and when their book was a bestseller, then they would pay me 1% of their takings. Right.

In the film world, for every 100 scripts that arrive, 99% are returned, but only the first page is read. You have to ask yourself why. One of my friends was eventually asked to stop submitting scripts.

Now here’s the interesting part. Only about 5% of people read continuously. The majority never pick up a book after they leave school or university. In other words, there are far fewer readers than there are writers. And that’s a problem for publishers. So their market becomes people who want to learn to write.

So the people who are writing all these articles on how to write aren’t writing them in order to prepare a future generation for writing articles, but simply to find a market place for what it is writing. They’re looking for readers.

For what it’s worth, most writers I know (and I’m talking about professional writers) never had to go to college to learn to write. None of the bestselling authors ever did a creative writing course, etc. Well JK Rowling did, but one of her profssors said she could already write because she got to college.

That’s my two bits.

To be honest, I don’t know if my opinion on this is relevant. That’s why I’m asking. You might well be right in what you say. I might just be old and worn. :)