I take great interest in people's literary ambitions and hear them out. My hope is that they really do have a book inside them, a story that just needs to be told or a new idea that the world just needs to know.
However, I usually find that this is not the case. There is no big idea. There is no innate storytelling ability. The genre is not of interest. The true passion is not there. Basic grammar is not there.
So why do they persist with the dream? Exactly because it is a dream. A dream to be published and to get validation from the whole world that they are someone. A dream to be rich and to go on book tours and to be invited in to a premium world of literary events. Like the lottery it is a dream to be the one that gets picked out of the pile of manuscripts for a team of editors, marketing people, lumberjacks and bean counters to devote themselves to their words.
We all want to be listened to and recognition is up there with food and a roof over one's head as a basic human need.
Publishing sets out an awful path for people to achieve these things. As a consequence a lot of wannabee writers are not really cut from the right cloth for it. You have to either be really good or have delusions of grandeur to want to take the path set out by publishing. Unless you really do have a story that does need to be told, some form and genuine motivation not tarnished by the aforementioned dreams of wanting the world to fall at your feet because you are up there with the Shakespeares and Hawkings of this world.
So this creates a situation where the people that really do have a book inside them that needs to be shared are less likely to be the ones putting themselves through the perverse pain that is the rejection world of publishing. In a word, the manuscripts piling up at the publishers really are submitted by the stupid people.
Although writing is generally there to create something for someone else to read, hopefully to enjoy, writing should be like knitting and other hobbies, i.e. a pastime that is personally satisfying to do. There is no reason for someone to read what you have written, in fact you might prefer writing to paper in an open ended way to explore thinking that you might not be able to explore in conversation.
Even though the dialogue is between yourself and the page a little bit of 'rubber duck debugging' goes on. You might find that after writing reams and reams of stuff you have actually sorted ideas in your mind to distil the ramblings into something that can be succinctly summarised into an idea that others can enjoy. The book really might not be needed. If the distillation of ideas has been arrived at before getting to the 'final chapter' then even finishing the work in progress might not be needed and the whole lot can be put in the bin. In some ways word processor crashes of unsaved work can be helpful with this.
We are doing pretty good with video and still images with people being able to do these things for sheer creative enjoyment. Youtube and Instagram are good platforms for people to do video blogs or photo diaries. The feedback works well, some people are happy to do this as a creative hobby. You can do videos about fixing your hamster wheel and not feel compelled that you have to be making the next Hollywood blockbuster mega series. You can post pictures of your hamster doing tricks without feeling you have to be the next Ansel Adams.
The legacy of the publishing industry and the state of current always-monetizing blogging platforms has cut a relatively rough deal for writers who just enjoy the creative fun of writing. Unless you want to restrict your output to mere tweets there is this expectation that you have to be the next J K Rowling. There isn't a happy medium where people can enjoy a modest level of writing and enjoy a modest and socially acceptable reward through likes for doing so. Maybe it is time to move on, to not brush people off with 'you have a book inside you' and to start telling people they have a 'youtube channel inside them'.