No. I'll tell you why I think that. And I may be wrong.

Writing seems to have developed some glamour, and just as young people dream of being rich and famous - singers, actors, dancers, sportmen - they drream of being writers.

They see movies and they read one or two books. They read very slowly, and they haven't read enough to recognize their own lack of good prose.

They actually see no difference between their own writing and that of a well-established author. They also think they can do the same thing.

To my mind, to a certain degree, writing is a talent, and it is honed very early by excessive reading. If one hasn't read, one simply will never be able to write. And you can see it in the lack of rhythm, the clumsy sentence structure, etc.

Of course, they can't see it. And all the other people who don't read can't see it. So until writing goes out of fashion, the idea that one can write without reading will persist.