Tony Barry wrote:
> An interesting thought. We so easily see "writing" as what those in
> the commercial sector do we forget that many people write for other
> purposes for which they get no direct reward.
It's not the presence of a reward so much as the kind of rewards
involved. Academics write papers and books for status rewards, formal
and informal; people write training manuals for companies because
they are paid to; public servants write reports -- but in these
cases the copyright on the works is pretty much irrelevant (or open
distribution is even an advantage). The parallel is with "in house"
software, written to solve some particular problem an organisation has.
> Maybe there is a distinction between "creative" writers and those who
> write more prosaic, dare I say factual, material.
Yes, it is harder with fiction, because the entities that aggregate
resources (corporations, governments) aren't so interested in it.
(Though there are Australia Council grants and suchlike, they are
tiny sums compared to say ARC or NHMRC grants.)
But people can and will support themselves with other jobs while
writing. And there are already two orders of magnitude more *great*
novels out there than I will ever find time to read...
Danny.
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