> There is nothing you can do to motivate someone who is fundamentally a non-writer to be a writer. The interest will never be there, no matter what the person chooses to say or think on the contrary.

I heard once this expression for those who dislike wine: It's not that you dislike wine, you just haven't found the wine that you like.

Writers don't write on anything and everything. They write on what interests them. It's what they're writing on that keeps them writing. Whether that's fiction or non-fiction.

Switch writing with math. How does someone go from having no initial interest in math to pursuing a career in it like G.H. Hardy?

pg's essay "How To Work Hard" highlights this:

"I suspect most people have to learn what work is before they can love it. Hardy wrote eloquently about this in A Mathematician's Apology:

'I do not remember having felt, as a boy, any passion for mathematics, and such notions as I may have had of the career of a mathematician were far from noble. I thought of mathematics in terms of examinations and scholarships: I wanted to beat other boys, and this seemed to be the way in which I could do so most decisively.'

He didn't learn what math was really about till part way through college, when he read Jordan's Cours d'analyse.

'I shall never forget the astonishment with which I read that remarkable work, the first inspiration for so many mathematicians of my generation, and learnt for the first time as I read it what mathematics really meant.'"