Dame Lili
First, if you want to read a damn fine piece of writing, you can look at the Selkie’s Grief Is A Color. The Selkie has a very fine eye for detail and observation. Also, one other announcement: Irene Goodman is auctioning off 25 critiques between December 1st and the 10th! Yes, 25! All proceeds will go directly to the Foundation Fighting Blindness and the Deafness Research Foundation. It’s a tremendous opportunity for any writer, and you get to do a good deed as well. I, like all the Deadline Dames, am a client of Irene’s agency, and I really can’t say enough good things about them.
Now, for the Friday writing post. Here’s another oldie but goodie, originally posted over at the now-defunct-but-sadly-missed Midnight Hour on April 4, 2008. Enjoy!
Skill vs. Talent
It certainly does appear to be an age-old question. Is writing a skill or a talent? Is it something you can learn–tab A into slot A, tab B into slot B, rinse and repeat–or is it a numinous thing, a touch of mad grace from the Muse that the precious few are gifted with?
Well, it’s not really either. The answer lies somewhere in between. If you have no fire, no spark, your work–no matter how well put-together–will be soulless. And all the Great Ideas and burning “I could do that” talent in the world won’t save a book if you don’t polish your craft and strive to write clearly and well.
We have this perception of the creative that’s analogous to lightning strikes. The Talent, the Inspiration, strikes the Helpless Gin-Soaked Writer, and the book that results is the burn. It springs forth whole from the forehead of the Helpless Gin-Soaked Chosen One, who must endure Years of Battle against Naysayers and Fools to get his opus/masterwork/Great American Novel published and recognized as staggering genius.
The vice-versa runs thus: the crowd is fickle and will pick trash for no discernable reason, so you have to just figure out the Magic Formula to make them pick your trash and retire to your house in the Hollywood Hills, laughing all the way.
The first is the schtick Byron used to get babes and wannabes use to avoid work. The second gives us huge piles of technical-manual crap with no characterization, power, or grace.
The real story is something like this: you can have varying levels of talent at this writing thing. But what is necessary is the discipline to grow that talent–and everything else necessary to a writer. If you, say, practice your guitar playing every day for ten years, you may not turn into a Segovia (who had to work his ass off too, dammit) but you WILL turn into the best damn guitar-player on your street, possibly in your town, and quite possibly within a couple hundred miles.
If you practice your writing every day, refine your craft, sharpen your language and read omnivorously, you may not turn into a Chekhov or a Dickens. (Who had to work THEIR asses off, too, let it be said.) But chances are you will start turning out decent, readable product, which has a far better chance of being published than the Werke of My Soule That Do Not Neede Grammare For.
Hand in hand with that discipline must be enjoyment. Don’t do this unless you enjoy it, for Christ’s sake. A writer writes clearly and well, using grammar and language as best as s/he is able to, constantly refining their craft for the eventual reader, so the telepathy between author and reader works with a minimum of distortion.
A writer gets up every goddamn morning and goes back to the laptop or the typewriter or the notebook because s/he enjoys it. It gives her a huge secret thrill to tell a story. Because there is something cool to do, something cool to say.
What other people call “talent” I usually think of as “joy in the making of something.” Look at, say, Eric Clapton or BB King. They’re not just up on stage whaling away until they can go home. No sir. When they pick up that guitar they are having fun. Their eyes light up. Christ, look at Mick Jagger. He still loves what he’s doing, and it’s not just because of the groupies.
Yeah, I know someone will say rock’n’roll ain’t writing. But it’s close enough for me–and really, writing is such a solitary thing that I can’t tell you what any other author looks like in the heat of creation. I can tell you that I’m having a ball, though. I look forward to writing every blessed day.
Someone can be immensely talented at writing–and can fritter away that talent by refusing to hone their discipline. Someone can be incredibly disciplined, but feel no heart-in-mouth joy in what they make. Those are two endpoints on a continuum, and it’s near the middle where the writer must balance. You’ve got to cultivate every scrap of talent you possess with discipline; and you must leaven the discipline with the joy and wonder of this marvelous thing you are doing, creating worlds. Juggling lives. Making little marks on a page into a living, breathing story.
The proper question, I think, isn’t whether it’s skill or talent. The proper question is, how do I balance what talent I have with the skill I can acquire? It takes hard work. It takes discipline. And if you don’t love what you’re doing you might as well deliver pizzas or practice law or take up with the Peace Corps or something, anything other than this.
Because it can eat you alive if you don’t love it.
But that’s another blog post.
