I’d rather have a world where people who aren’t great writers blog and write every day even if they don’t improve. Better to live in a world where people express themselves than not!

And I think over the long haul (measured in years) that 99% of the people will become better writers. I certainly have improved!

From Most valuable asset [dive into mark]<p>QUOTE</p><blockquote>I grew up being taught, believing, and teaching others to believe that there were only two things you needed to do to become a good writer:

  1. Read every day

  2. Write every day

But now we have thousands of webloggers who read other webloggers every day, and who themselves write every day, and they’re not getting any better at writing. Some people become better writers through weblogging, but if you look around you’ll have to agree that many don’t. They may fancy themselves as writers, or even journalists, because after all they’ve been writing every day for years. But their latest stuff is just as immature and nonsensical as their old stuff. They can’t put words together. (What’s so good about putting words together? It’s traditionally considered advantageous for a writer.)

This bothers me enormously. First, the mind-boggling lack of self-knowledge required to write every day and not realize that you write badly. But more important, the fact that there is obviously a secret third ingredient required for becoming a good writer. You need to read every day… and write every day… and X. But I don’t know what X is, and obviously my teachers didn’t know either. They had it, but they didn’t know it. Daily writing is not our most valuable asset. So what is it?</blockquote><p>UNQUOTE</p>

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