Fact Check Me: The Problem Isn’t Writing — It’s Ideas
It used to be about how many words you could write.
You had to fill the book.
You had to justify the advance.
You had to earn the shelf.
Scarcity forced people to stretch ideas until they *looked* important.
Volume became proof of seriousness.
Endurance became proof of intelligence.
Then the constraint disappeared.
Now anyone can publish instantly, publicly, endlessly.
And that exposed something uncomfortable:
Most people were never short on words.
They were short on ideas.
When publishing was hard, verbosity hid that.
When publishing is easy, emptiness shows.
That’s why so much writing today feels circular.
Derivative.
Inflated.
Technically correct but inert.
People aren’t thinking — they’re documenting participation.
The real shift isn’t that writing got shorter.
It’s that ideas now live in public, in real time.
The skill isn’t writing more anymore.
The skill is knowing when a thought is finished.
Most people don’t.
They pad.
They explain.
They decorate.
They keep going long after the idea has already left the room.
Direct writing isn’t shallow.
Simple writing isn’t simplistic.
It’s considerate.
In a world drowning in words, clarity reads as confidence.
In a world starving for thinking, finished thoughts feel radical.
Fact check me.
You make some salient points here Eric. Just like every person isn't cut out for professional sports, not everyone is cut out for writing, and you highlight that ideas (and imagination) are key components of fiction. But whereas people generally can't run onto a pitch or field in uniform and cosplay as a sports star, writing is accessible to everyone. It's okay to democratize a thing, ultimately the people who pay for writing will determine what they find worthy of their time and money