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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/13081
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

The thing is that people tend to confuse writing with writing.

Think, for a moment, of winning a marathon or singing an opera. Everyone can hurry along to a degree or sing under the shower, yet no one who has been hurrying to work for fifty years or singing under the shower every morning for decades would expect to win the NY Marathon or to be hired to perform in Mozart's Figaro.

Now, returning to writing, you must certainly realize that writing, in the sense of drawing letters, is not the same as writing in the sense of having an interesting story idea, understanding human psychology enough to create believable characters, knowing genre conventions to be able to create a suspenseful and satisfying plot, and finally being able to step outside your own head and tell the story in a way that is intriguing to a sizable market share. Oh, and let's not forget a mastery of language that includes a feeling for syntactic rhythm and a general ability to form pleasant and understandable sentences.

Writing, in the sense of crafting narratives, can no more be learned by writing shopping lists, emails or academic journal articles than walking to the bus is adequate training for a marathon.

Why people tend to confuse the two is a complete mystery to me.

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