I have always loved the hilarious, classic Kurt Vonnegut essay about writing conferences Teaching the Unteachable. It contains one of my favorite Vonnegut quotes, which I have paraphrased for years:

"The idea of a conference for prose writers is an absurdity. They don't confer, can't confer. It's all they can do to drag themselves past one another like great, wounded bears."

Every time someone new to writing asks me if I recommend this conference or that one, I toss this quote their way. I don't do it to discourage them--although, if I were a more compassionate person, I probably ought to. I do it to remind them that writing, like anything else, can be practiced by many people but only practiced really well by those who have the personality and innate aptitude for it.

Of course, you can't find out if you have an aptitude until you try it. So, people ought to try it if they want to. Unfortunately, a lot of people who have no writer genes whatsoever continue to pursue the art long after their lack of talent becomes apparent. The tragedy is not that the Web is clogged with hopefuls who can't write, but that they might never find out where their true talent lies while they waste themselves typing instead of writing.

Vonnegut doesn't say that these folks should quit. Nor do I. Because if they did, and conferences disappeared, where would writers spend their summers, and how would they pay their bar tab?

This essay was published in 1967. The world has changed a lot since then, in terms of technology. And there are more people than there were back then. But human nature stays the same. As long as there are people who want to be writers, there will be people who make money telling them how.