I kinda like this article. It's a response to another article (technically a listicle, I guess) which I dislike.

But both articles are about something that I am very sick of talking/hearing/reading about, which is how MFA programs are either helpful or not helpful, and people who do not really want to be writers should not go around pretending they want to be writers, and should not waste their time or money because some people are just not cut out for this blah blah blah.

This is all well and good to think about at some point, but man oh man does it get tedious when it comes up again and again.

Is there any other profession where people do this to their own kind? Like, when carpenters get together en masse (at the yearly carpenter convention, obviously) do they break into groups of gossiping jerkwads snickering at each other? Dude, Tommy over there uses a wooden clawhammer instead of a fiberglass claw hammer! What an asshole! Tee-hee!

I say this knowing quite well how guilty of the same crap I have been in the past, and in retrospect can say how counterproductive it is, which is maybe why I find it so annoying now. I think we are most annoyed by in others what we dislike in ourselves. So yeah. I'm not blaming the original article writer for being ranty and pretty much dead wrong, and I'm not even blaming him for venting in public. I just think it is far better to put our energies elsewhere--which is a helpful mantra when it comes to virtually everything on the internet.

Sit in chair and write. Or don't. The end.