OldDad, I agree that most people encounter this issue. It's a matter of degree--and I would say my son has a much harder time than most people (even most--or at least many--extremely bright people) on this front. And I think you are right on target about what would help, although some things don't hold a lot of potential for reframing/tweaking to pursue a passion.
No doubt sometimes you have to take a different angle on it such as, "I understand that sentence structure isn't of great interest to you, however, in order to write down what you feel so passionate about and be understood by who's reading it, sentence structure is important, so how about we work through the sentence structure with focus so we can get to what you really like as quickly as possible?"
I think it's important for kids to understand that there are necessary evils to almost everything. The car ride to Dairy Queen isn't particularly enjoyable, however, the end result is. Sometimes it helps to focus on the end result and what is between here and there is the cost of getting that end result.
