Writing; creation or reproduction?

Before diving into analyzing writing as a creation or reproduction, it’s important to characterize and understand the writer’s population in the world. According to studentscholerships.org there are 281,300 thousand authors, writers and editor's. Statista illustrates progress in the amount of writers in USA between the years 2011–2020 (figure 1).The amount of writers in America jumped to 44,240 writers and authors.

Figure 1. Number of writers and authors in USA.

The ICEF monitor shows a projection of students around the globe by region for the years 2000–2040. Our discussion is around the present student population involved in the writing activity as they are in the higher education degree. 250.7 million Student in the higher education in all regions of the world as presented in figure 2.

Figure 2. Worldwide higher education enrolment by global region, actual from 2000 to 2015 and projected to 2040. Source: Calderon, UNESCO.

World population according to data from worldometer is 7,794,798,739. The amount of educated population in the world has reduced from year 2000 (80%) while in year 2016 (20%) as shown in figure 3.

Figure 3. World educated population.

80% of world population is 6.23 billion are educated people. The amount of students in the higher education is 270.5 million, means 5% of the student educated people use writing in the daily life.

Returning to Google data and hosting tribunal there are 500 million blogs on the internet out of 1.7 billion commercial websites. This gives us a full picture of the amount of people in the world using writing in their daily life. As a total 10% of the educated population in the world use writing.

The writer’s population is divided into two half’s, first half is in the education arena while the second half use writing for business.

First here it is essential to identify what is creation? And what is reproduction?

Production in the writing field comprises using the language tools and skills to present a literature work whether it is to present an existing idea, or a business related activity. And reproduction is to collect these ideas and present it in a different way. Creation is defined as the act of turning the invention into reality. Invention includes a new idea, effective device, new process, new product, new method, new value, and better solution to meet required goals- into reality.

So we have here writers in the education field and writers in the business field. In the education arena, writers use writing to present reports, essays, research. These activities comprise various tasks related to writing such as a writing plan, collecting data, grouping and analysis, and finally writing the findings. Writer in this process uses the language principals of grammar & style, structure, sentences, readability, consistency, plagiarism and proper referencing. For that, the writer here collects ideas from others and presents his perspective of the research, essay, or report subject. As shown here, if the outcomes is not an invention then all the work here falls in the reproduction area.

In the business field, writing is used to present the business product. Writing here does not illustrate a creative act as most business individuals write using the same procedure, tools and skills.

Finally, writing is creative when it is used to present a new idea, method, process, and a new solution for a problem to achieve certain goals. Mostly writing in art, literature such as novel and poetry writing, social science and architecture where new ideas and methods are presented comprise creative work. I have included one chapter in my book analyzing the writing process and how to overcome its difficulties to make it an awarding creation.