Reading this article I have had a couple of thoughts.
1) I'm pretty sure this can only apply mostly to people who are lucky enough to enjoy writing and have writing as their job. I am a Writer or a Poet but I am not lucky enough to have regular assignments. I am not lucky enough to have assignments at all. If I want to write, and therefore by extention consider myself a writer (because you cannot consider yourself a do-er of a thing if you are not doing that thing) then I have to write - on my own.
2) Additionally, seriously, just because you've done well in school doesn't mean you're at the top of your game. Yes I was in the top third of my poetry writing class by ability. But that didn't mean by any stretch of the measure that I was as good as Pablo Neruda, e. e. cummings, Louise Gluck.
I say, that if there are people out there who would like to think they are writers but can't convince themselves to write an article by the deadline, good for them. I hope they get fired. I hope that their job spots open up...for someone like me.
The article rings very true. Both the on-topic stuff about avoiding writing when we don't feel you'll produce something of quality and the whole off-topic thing about top-of-the-class students not failing enough as kids to form a strong personality. Let's face it, we all want the glory and "critical acclaim" of writing something good, so when you feel like you will produce only something mediocre or actually bad, you don't feel like writing at all. It's like having a brilliant startup idea and not executing on it because you don't want to dirty up you beautiful imaginary world of success with the harshness of reality and people not caring about your idea. But in French they say "l'appetit vient en mangeant" (the desire to eat comes while eating) so procrastinating is not the answer. Write one true sentence. Here I am writing this comment instead of going back to my book and writing the intro paragraph to Chapter 6.... Okay, that's it I'm going. One last thing: if you're ever stuck with writer's block, try recording yourself speak and then transcribing what you wrote. It works great for me when I'm tired. I could me mentally too tired to type, but I can speak a coherent sentence that flows nicely.
Creativity in this day and age, I think, mostly consists of 'standing on the shoulders of giants'. Being able to look around all your peers and greats in the present and past and see patterns, mix them up, construct a new puzzle from multiple old ones. Adding your own unique perspective that is in turn an amalgamation of countless amounts before yours. Whenever I see someone complaining of creative block (in music) I immediately tell them to start listening to lots of music. Especially stuff outside the genre they are drawn to and new music in general. I guess this is more of a arduous task in writing, in that reading a book is quite a long process. Imagine how much different music someone could've listened to by the time someones has read, absorbed and construed just 10 books. Just an observation.
because if we were not we would have real jobs.
This article begins to talk about writing and ends up talking about child-rearing. Ok. Though the two are related, because both fall along the lifespans of certain individuals, it doesn't really address what it takes to be a writer in general, or a writer of articles, or novels or poems, or plays, or even fortune cookies. The thing about being a writer is that writing needs to be written. No writing, no writer. Getting people to buy the writing, that's a different story. How the writing process occurs over a broad selection of writers is what I was expecting to read about and something I think is an article worth reading about. I already read a bunch of articles on Millenials and the current marketplace though.
I agree. This article was disappointing. I shared it because I think I wanted to talk about how disappointing it was. I don't see much data in the article to support its conclusions, to be frank, just anecdotes and observations. Attempts at justifying those anecdotes, sure, but still. Not data. I think that if you don't have a job as a writer and want to consider yourself a writer, you can't afford to procrastinate. Not on a weekly basis. If I haven't written anything in a week, am I still a writer? (Exceptions for hiatuses. I have taken hiatuses once or twice before. But then I'm not a writer. I'm on hiatus.)