With that being said Eddie Izzard, with little training, ran 43 marathons in 51 days. He didn't break any records or win any medals, which I suppose is roughly analogous to getting a book published, but he did do it, over and over again, which is arguably writing the damn book.

All of this suggests that I could probably run a marathon right now if I really felt like it. Fortunately (I'll say it again) I can't be arsed. Same goes for writing the book, because nothing inspires me enough to write an entire book. But I could do it, because I've absolutely written a book's worth of words over the past few years.

Nowhere near that long. There's actually a great book ("The Non-Runner's Marathon Trainer") which takes you, quite conservatively, from "I can run a few miles" to your first marathon day in 16 weeks.

With runs on only 4 days a week -- only one of them a long run -- it hardly "takes over your life", either.

My training consisted of maybe a dozen 2 mile runs, and a couple of 6 mile runs, in the space of about a month.

I didn't do any exercise other than that. I wouldn't say I'm naturally athletic either. Sure, I was pretty slow at 2:30, but I managed to run the whole thing without resting or walking.

I reckon that I could smash out a marathon with less than 6 months of training, running 3 days a week. It certainly wouldn't take over my life, and it wouldn't take a year of training.

A similar endurance event I did once was riding a century (100 miles). Sure, riding a bike is a bit easier than running, but my total training for that was about 6 months, riding 25 miles 4 times a week, plus a single 60 mile ride. I managed to complete the ride in about 5:30.

Humans are well adapted to long distance endurance activities. A person of average fitness can walk 12 hours a day for a week with a 15-20 kg pack.

[1] I couldn't have imagined working out either but at 36 years old I found myself getting tired out walking upstairs, and having a torrid time with any kind of reasonably intense physical activity, and realised I needed to do something about it to avoid serious health problems later in life - and possibly not that much later.

Well, so could any human being. I've run a bunch of Marathons, and I've personally seen people with no legs complete them. The only significant difference between those who have completed a Marathon and those who haven't is who could be arsed to do it. But I don't think that extrapolates to any human endeavour. Highly motivated people can work their entire lives and something, and still fail.

It depends on the genre and if it's fiction or non-fiction. Non fiction, yes. But fiction is harder because of stylistic attributes and the fact it all has to connect. It's not like writing 300 300-word blog posts.

Too general a statement. Sure, an engaging consistent story is much harder than, say, the average cookbook or travel guide.

But many textbooks in science and math seem like absolutely Herculean effort. Gravitation[1] by Misner, Thorne, & Wheeler (a work of non-fiction) in my opinion would be the equivalent in intellectual effort to several thousand average works of fiction.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Gravitation-Charles-W-Misner/dp/06911...

Ever read Dan Brown?

Is there? The general public can be sold any kind of crap that takes minimal effort -- and in the same way, don't buy masterpieces that take tremendous effort and skill to create.

>It might be tawdry, silly, and factually inaccurate, but those qualities are orthogonal to whether or not you can write a story that people want to buy.

This isn't an argument on actual writing skill though.

It's like you measure a new category like "skill of writing best-selling stuff" that's not necessarily connected to the skill of writing itself -- just to the degree of sales.

But one can sell bad stuff or skilless stuff too. Sales don't show anything more than a skill in sales themselves.

Eeesh. Any able-bodied person can walk a marathon, given sufficient motivation. You might be able to run parts of it, but you can't run a marathon through sheer force of will if you haven't done the training.

A book is technically just a bunch of bound pages, so anyone can write one in the loosest sense of the word. I can just type the word "beige" 80,000 times and call it a day. Writing a book that someone will actually read past the first chapter requires a certain level of skill. The author isn't telling people not to try - his closing paragraph makes that clear - but he's warning people of the amount of work and practice involved in writing something that people want to read.

To quote the great Ronnie Coleman, "everybody wanna to be a bodybuilder, but ain't nobody wanna lift no heavy-ass weight". The number of people who like the idea of being an author is vastly greater than the number of people willing to learn how to write well. If you enjoy the process of writing, then by all means write for your own pleasure. If you harbour dreams of being the next J.K. Rowling, you're likely to be sorely disappointed.

The original metaphor is a bit off. Anyone who puts in the effort could write fifty thousand words on the same theme or plot. Likewise anyone could complete a marathon with enough training and effort. A better comparison would be writing a novel that people would pay to read, and completing a marathon so quickly that people would pay you to do it.

While everyone can do the amateur version of these tasks not everyone can do the professional certain.

It's not merely a case of writing something that someone would pay to read, but writing something that someone would read at all. That's a considerably lower hurdle, but one that many authors never vault. Every day, the slush piles of publishers swell with lovingly-crafted novels that will, in all likelihood, never be read by anyone.

The parallel I might draw is with a singer so dreadfully tone deaf that their neighbours lodge a complaint, or a comedian so bad that they are booed off stage at an open-mic night. Most first-time novelists are precisely that awful - their work is not merely of insufficient quality to attract a paying audience, but actively repellent. Few budding authors are prepared for that level of disappointment.

Yes, and you can't write a book if you can't read, or structure a sentence, or have a computer/typewriter/crayon, etc...

I'm mostly fine walking around. I can even do short flights of stairs. In fact, up until a few years ago they only bothered me when I sat in a really unergonomic chair for a while. Then someone convinced me to try this "couch to 5k" thing, and said that literally anyone could do it, and that I liked like I weighed maybe half as much as people that'd actually followed the timetable and gone from couch to 5k.

Fast forward two months. The doctor says "stay off your feet and see if it gets better". They haven't started feeling better. It's been almost three years.

I understand the viewpoint you're trying to hold, and I sympathize. Knowing there are things you can't do really sucks. Especially when you try and fail at something you really wanted, in Brooklyn or otherwise. Unfortunately, you're being a little bit insensitive, verging on offensive. "Just put down the crutches and walk". "Just stop being depressed and be happy". "Just focus". "Just try harder". "Just stop telling yourself you're incapable".

Almost came here with this exact same comment. Absolutely not amount of motivation or feel good thinking about my own capabilities and willingness to 'do the damn thing' can surmount the sheer agony and pain I feel after a 2 mile run (because that's the most I can bear to stand) after years of jumping out of airplanes for a living (US Military) over 12 years.

Ever have your knee shattered to pieces and fracture a femur after having a chute partially open and hitting the ground at 6ft/sec? Lemme tell you something: it's horrifying.

You know the phrase "blinding pain"? It's a kind of pain that's so severe your vision literally blurs.

You can see things, you can make out shapes, but your brain is so focused on that pain that vision rides shotgun for a bit. It's a level of pain that can (and has) induced vomiting and loss of consciousness when I so much as step the wrong way off a curb.

Don't tell me "you can do it, just put your mind to it" when my mind doesn't even have the bandwidth to register vision.

There is NO amount of "you can do it" motivational, go-getter mentality that will convince me to push through that kind of pain. Absolutely, positively and without any hesitation on the topic at hand: N-O-N-E. Heck, I stood up once to go get a cup of coffee, turned, stepped in an awkward way and turned my knee and immediately fell over in tears.

So when someone says they can't run a marathon, maybe leave it at that-they know what they're capable of better than you do.

Let's not ignore the other option (among many) which is: people in perfectly fine health who aren't particularly fond of having the ideals and opinions of the hyper-health conscious and uber-active lifestyle types projected onto them from someone who doesn't have the letters M.D. following their surname.

Also, training for marathon requires a lot of time and there is opportunity cost there. I will not blame father for spending his time with kids instead of training for marathon or what not. Nor someone who spends time educating himself rather then physically training. Or reading book, washing dishes or just having time consuming job.

The motivational quotes are told to make people feel good.

Yes, you can write out an idea. Whether that gets to be a page or not is another story.

Yes, you can write out a book. Whether that gets published or not is another story.

Yes, you can self publish a book. Whether that gets people to care or not is another story.

Yes, you can spread your ideas to others. Whether that lasts or not is another story.

Yes, you can live on through your words. Whether that's going to be good or bad on your name is another story.

But through it all, all that matters is what you choose to self identify as. Whether you survive, benefit, or take over the industry built up before you or by others, is another story.

A number of famous composers were not 'successful' in their time, same with painters, same with some writers (A Confederacy of Dunces comes to mind), later after their death they gained acclaim.

I think the mere act of creation and distribution of art is the goal in itself, and with technology you can keep it around for a long time.

To say something isn't popular doesn't mean it's not good. In 200 years conservatories of music are not going to be talking about Taylor Swift despite her engineered success, who knows who they'll be talking about!

Similarly, the overwhelming majority can produce a book length manuscript, even if it isn't particularly remarkable. Again, they may need to work up to it.

In this, near-perfect verbal SAT is pretty much irrelevant.

If by publishing you mean Amazon, then yeah, anyone can do that. Even robots can. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-amazon-kindle-spam/spam-c...

That's too low a bar. If you don't make the New York Times list, you're not really writing a book, and if you're not winning the Boston marathon, you're not marathoning.

Or so some would say.

Ignoring the problems and gatekeeping attendant in publishers, I belive most people could write a book that a significant number of people they didn't already know would pay to read (this may fall well below the numbers that would make a publisher interested). It probably wouldn't be their first book. Similarly most people could run enough to post a decent marathon time - again, probably not on their first marathon.

The main characteristic is not "raw talent" or physiology, respectively - the main characteristic is trying, failing, learning from your errors, trying more.

I forget who said it but "talent is a pursued interest". If you pick a random person and they choose to put the time in odds are extremely good they could write an ok book or post an ok marathon time. They aren't likely to write a best seller or break 2:30 - but that's not the point.

It is undeniably true that the overwhelming majority of people will never do either of these, but that is not because they are incapable of it but because they do not choose to focus time there.

What's mostly missing from this discussion is marketing. Sorry, but even pretty good books will languish on Amazon (which is mostly what matters) if you just put a book out there, fiction or non-fiction, with the attitude that "If you build it, they will come." (Like most everything else.)

Unless you're a known quantity for other reasons, even getting accepted by a publisher is a tough slog and there is a long list of stories of publishers (like studios) passing on blockbusters. Not that getting in with a major publisher is any guarantee of success but cultivating a fan base as a total independent self-publishing is that much harder.

(In addition, as someone who does a lot of writing and editing, you're also probably optimistic about the abilities of said random person.)

If you can craft an engaging story and you have the motivation to write, an editor (or a thesaurus) can help with vocabulary.

Actually reading comprehension is about everything _besides_ subject knowledge.

It's about the pure ability to understand something you've read -- e.g. to understand tone, intent, turns of phrase, idioms, writing styles, patterns, argument building, etc -- not about having some particular domain knowledge.

In other words if you read an article about a physics experiment but didn't understand it because you don't know what "spin", "wavefunction", or "interferometer" means in QM, then you don't have a reading comprehension problem. You just have a lack of physics knowledge.

If, inversely, you read an article about something you know very well in real life (e.g. baseball), but miss what the author tries to say, mistake the intent of some metaphor, misunderstand the argumentation, etc, then you do have a reading comprehension problem.

Of course to comprehend something you read you also need to be familiar with the thing it's talking about to. But reading comprehension is about everything else but that part -- it's about being familiar with the written word and the ways people express things in writing in themselves [1].

[1] "Fundamental skills required in efficient reading comprehension are knowing meaning of words, ability to understand meaning of a word from discourse context, ability to follow organization of passage and to identify antecedents and references in it, ability to draw inferences from a passage about its contents, ability to identify the main thought of a passage, ability to answer questions answered in a passage, ability to recognize the literary devices or propositional structures used in a passage and determine its tone, to understand the situational mood (agents, objects, temporal and spatial reference points, casual and intentional inflections, etc.) conveyed for assertions, questioning, commanding, refraining etc. and finally ability to determine writer's purpose, intent and point of view, and draw inferences about the writer"

https://www.education.com/reference/article/prior-knowledge-...

http://www.readingrockets.org/article/building-background-kn...

Here's a few articles on the topic with very relevant reference sections if you'd like to know more.

You don't have to define it thusly, though. Whatever SAT tests test for, this is already the dictionary meaning of the term. The except was from Wikipedia.

Here's a dictionary lemma too: comprehension: "a test to find out how well students understand written or spoken language" (listening/reading comprehension).

It's not argued that domain knowledge doesn't factor tremendously in understanding. Just that this is not a reading comprehension intends to measure (heck, the hint is in the very combination of the words that make up the term).

Of course in order to understand some text in a reading comprehension test, domain knowledge will also help.

But reading comprehension is not about any particular domain -- and tests in that don't constraint themselves to only present texts about a specific subject.

I don't think vocab can be taught. The reason is, vocab is very highly correlated with IQ, which is stable thought life and cannot be boosted. A large vocab requires a strong crystallized memory, which is a part of IQ. Most people when they encounter new words either are unable to infer the meaning and or forget it, but smart people do both.

The fact that IQ and vocabulary are correlated across a population doesn't imply that, and it's clearly not true unless you don't think someone can learn a new language later in life. Or you think that a person can learn 10k new words in a new language, but not an extra few thousand in their existing language?

>Competent writers have a varied vocabulary which does not come across as forced

Yes competent writing requires some minimum vocabulary. It doesn't require a vocabulary sufficient to score near perfect on the SAT. Most writers limit the vocabulary they use to match their target audience, so having a much larger vocabulary than your target audience isn't going to be that useful.

Yet, from Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence_quotient):

>Raw scores on IQ tests for many populations have been rising at an average rate that scales to three IQ points per decade since the early 20th century, a phenomenon called the Flynn effect.