Doesn't work for me either.

Can I really offend him and ask who he is.  Honestly, I've never heard of him

What a jerk!

I read that on Facebook and was seriously offended. The "if you haven't decided to be a writer while still a teenager then you can't make it in your 30s or 40s" attitude was bullshit. The whole article held nothing but a pompous, self-important, and bitter tone.

I hope his critics slam his work on a regular basis.

I'm not any of those things he outlined in bold headlines. I feel depressed now!

 

Or, as I'll dub it: Blowhard Speaks Out

This makes my day.

Well... I'm not crazy about his tone, but he is right about the necessity of reading.

I think he has a lot of good points. I've met the people who complain - constantly - about not having the time to write, that it's "too hard" to get readers or get published, or that wading through their work to edit and check grammar is a "waste" of their "precious writing time".

With every single one of these complaints and bitchy comments, all I could think was: Drop out and do something else.

The entire article struck me as a burned out teacher who no longer had the patience to teach.  I did take personal offence to the late start in life bit, but as Sasha said - some of his points make sense, but were presented in the most offensive way I could imagine.

Wow. I guess cause I am in forties and attempting to make a go of it I should give up now. Hmm. I taught and if anything I remember trying to inspire not rip apart. Still go by mother's golden rule, if you have nothing nice to say, say nothing. Trust me I've read some truly awful work and just skipped a comment on it. However if I see even the slightest thing to redeem it, well I will send a personal note to the author suggesting they might want to do x, y, or z. As for reading, it is necessary. I don't think it has to be the classics. Read whatever it is that ignites your passion. Read what excites you. I use to tell parents if their child likes comics then get them comics. The important thing is to read and feed that part of the imagination. The rest you get as you grow older and have to face grim reality of life. Even then most of us would rather dive into our fiction where things turn out a bit better for everyone.

Basically he had some good points but couldn't get at them through the bile.

Eh, as a casual reader with nothing invested I don't mind reading a bit and moving on if I don't like what I find at an amateur site. A Master of Fine Arts program is supposed to be the real deal, heck I got turned down from one myself in my youth It's this guy's job to turn his students into serious writers. If I were even just getting paid to teach writing to adults in any program and my students refused to read or write, I'd fail 'em. That's what I don't get. Why is he wasting time getting upset? Kick them out of class and move on. 

This guy is what I call a douche-cicle.

Under the right conditions, density of the douche become so great that it takes solid form- and apparently, even blogs.

Hey, I love polemics. It's a Point of View. That's the whole point What this kind of stuff does is get you thinking, responding and reacting. And that's all good I don't see merit in castigating someone for being blunt about expressing views based on their own personal life experience, especially as the interweb has democratised the ability to do that ourselves and to find our own audiences.

In fact many of his points make sense to me.  For example the need to be well and widely read if you strive to be an excellent writer. Show me any excellent musician who has not spent a good chunk of their life closely studying and learning from the work of many other excellent musicians. You gotta put in the work.

You can learn technique but you cannot learn creativity - because that comes from inside. What you can learn is how to express creativity in a way that appeals to audiences other than yourself, using techniques that can be taught. Let's face it, in terms of artistic ability we are not all created equal. Sad but true.

The only point I really take issue with is you have to start as a teenager to build yourself the "neural architecture" - surely a winning entry for Pseuds Corner Wrong too - we know that the brain continues to develop throughout life according to how we use it. It's never too late to grow ourselves some new brain connections
 

I am off two minds here. On the surface, I felt the bitterness and beneath that, frustration. These would be good indicators of burnout, so it would be easy to dismiss him out of turn. Well beneath these things though, I sensed some merit, even if it was presented in a somewhat mean and warped way. I agree that a passion for reading as a child would be a great assist, yet he ruins that by denigrating those who enjoy reading any and all genres. Dictating what a person should or should not read would place limits on them in my opinion. Some of the most intricate work I have ever read has been science fiction. Touting the 'Classics' as the be-all and end-all is another mistake. I am attempting writing at the ripe old age of 60... saying 'attempting' would most likely cross me off his list, never mind my advanced age. The man has his views and they do not infuriate me. I will continue on my merry way, choosing my path, regardless of another person's opinion of the validity of my choice. I enjoy what I am doing... and whether someone else considers me a writer or not, at this point in time, I do. I have proof. It says 'Author' right after my name on the GA site  .