theivorypen

For a non-established blog like the Ivory Pen, 21 respondents isn’t too bad, so I am happy with it. Although I naturally wouldn’t have minded a few more. Due to the few respondents and the fact that I am in no way a professional in terms of analyzing results, the results here can be taken with a big grain of salt:P

Let’s cut to the chase;
twice as many females as males participated, 14 vs. 7, but since I am a female I am likely to reach out to more females than males. Same goes for age, over 66% of the writers were in the 21-40 class. I guess I should have made two classes.

But let’s get to the interesting part! Why on earth do people write?
One thing that seemed to be reoccurring is that writing is seen as a way to express your-self. In the midst of a world with almost 7 billion people, it can be difficult to be heard. I can relate to that(got a blog don’t I?:P), so many actually uses writing as a way of expressing themselves. And frankly, I think it is a great way of doing it:) Be it books, blogs or whatever.

The other thing that stood out was passion and creation in itself. Writers want to create and share worlds, cultures, people, history, opinions, thoughts, feelings, and so on. Some even mention it as therapy. And as a psychology student, I know writing has been used as therapy with great results:)
As for publishing, most obviously want to publish and most seems to keep writing as something on the side, in addition to a job more or less unrelated to writing. Only five wanted to make a living on writing alone. If that means publishing a super hit like Harry Potter or working as a freelance writer on the side, I don’t know.

Now there is the interesting part, namely where people get their feedback. Not surprisingly 85,7% gets feedback from friends and/or family, and on second place the blogs, online communities, forums and the like appear. But I am surprised to see that two actually gets feedback from an established writer! Non-professionals beta-readers also seem popular.

I did look for gender differences, and the guys seems to not promote themselves or their writing as much as the girls(I picked 7 girls at random to match the 7 guys who participated). The girls also seemed to get more feedback than the guys. I have read articles that girls are better with the social elements, also on the web, so there might be a connection there. They might simply be better at establishing contact and then get feedback.

And despite the few guys, they seemed to want to make a living on writing alone more than the girls, who wanted to have writing on the side of employment. But both seem to fear rejection equally. This is what psychology calls Fear of failure. If you try hard to accomplish something, the fall is so much harder when you fail, than when you don’t try.

I’m a little surprised; I expected bigger gender differences, not that I am complaining or anything! The guys and girls seem to be on quite equal footing at this point. But then again, it might just be sampling error:P