I'm not sure how much Scalzi's advice was meant to be extrapolated to other fields, to be honest. Most fields aren't overrun with people who claim to be in them, but don't do the one thing that defines membership. It seemed to me that he was answering the large number of people who are always asking "How do you become a writer?" with "You write."
It's precisely because the barrier to being a writer is so low that the advice is meaningful. Anyone can write a few hundred words a day. Most of us do it by accident - all it takes to accomplish that minimum step of "being a writer" is to do that. But there are hundreds of people hanging around Scalzi's blog who talk about the novel they're going to write someday - they hang around all over the SF community, and talk about all the things that prevent them from writing the best novel ever, and this advice is very applicable to them. You become a writer by writing, and if want to be a writer but think you do not have time to write, then you need to ask whether all the things you are doing instead of writing are more important to you than writing.
It's not The Secret; it's not that hideous entitlement/privilege philosophy that you can have Anything if you just want it hard enough. It's just about writing. If you have something that can mark letters on something else, and can scrape up twenty minutes a day, then you can be a writer. (Now, from there, the question of whether you can be a good writer is a very different one, and that's another question for aspiring writers to ask themselves. But being a writer is a necessary prerequisite to being a good writer.)
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
momijizukamori
no subject
Date: 2010-09-21 06:31 pm (UTC)It's precisely because the barrier to being a writer is so low that the advice is meaningful. Anyone can write a few hundred words a day. Most of us do it by accident - all it takes to accomplish that minimum step of "being a writer" is to do that. But there are hundreds of people hanging around Scalzi's blog who talk about the novel they're going to write someday - they hang around all over the SF community, and talk about all the things that prevent them from writing the best novel ever, and this advice is very applicable to them. You become a writer by writing, and if want to be a writer but think you do not have time to write, then you need to ask whether all the things you are doing instead of writing are more important to you than writing.
It's not The Secret; it's not that hideous entitlement/privilege philosophy that you can have Anything if you just want it hard enough. It's just about writing. If you have something that can mark letters on something else, and can scrape up twenty minutes a day, then you can be a writer. (Now, from there, the question of whether you can be a good writer is a very different one, and that's another question for aspiring writers to ask themselves. But being a writer is a necessary prerequisite to being a good writer.)