Talent, part 2

Last week I started a three-part post on talent, which deserves a lot more space than just three posts because writers think about it a lot—and obsess over it, letting it worry us far more than it should. After all, learning is really at the crux of the question about talent. There are advantages to learning slowly that talent can’t give you. In fact, an inflated view of the benefits of talent can hurt even talented writers. I’ve met beginning writers who, when told they were talented, basically stopped writing because they thought they didn’t have to put in any work. Then their less talented peers who were willing to work hard ended up strengthening their craft and leaving the talented ones in the dust. Moreover, the writers I’ve met who grow slowly tend to consciously retain what they’ve learned, which makes them able to apply their new skills to other projects. If you’re banking on your frequently complimented talent to help you plot that chapter or craft that dialogue, it can mess with your head when the words don’t automatically come to you.

In other words, the talent question can deter you from writing. Some writers hear they are talented, and they believe they can churn out a book and get famous overnight. When this doesn’t happen, they stop writing. Others don’t hear they’re talented—or they hear they have talent but that they’ll still have to put in work—and they stop writing because (a) they’re lazy, (b) they felt obligated to write but didn’t really want to do it, or (c) they’ve fallen into the trap of thinking they have to write an instant masterpiece, that hard work somehow invalidates the book they wanted to write.

I suspect (c) happens far more often than the other two. The writerly fear of not being talented is really “Am I unable to learn?” in disguise. If you’re asking the question, you’re able to learn—which we all need no matter our level of talent. An untalented hack and a talented writer whose career never goes anywhere have one thing in common: they’re both blithely unaware that they need to learn anything.

I try to value skill and work over talent—skill in terms of the crafts that I can hone and practice, work in terms of how often and for how long I sit down at my laptop and hone my WIP. If I have no talent, that’s out of my control. Skill and hard work are within my reach.

But perhaps you’re thinking, “That’s all well and good for other writers but not for me. When I was in second grade, my teacher told me my poems stunk so bad she heaved them out with the garbage just to clear the air. In college, my professor told me his hair had gone white just from reading my poorly written essays. And at a public reading, the visiting writer spotted me from the lectern, took one look at me, and ran screaming from the room. How can I spring back and call myself a writer even to myself when other people have told me such terrible things in response to my writing?”

If you, dear reader, have had such hair-raising tales to tell of your artistic struggle, come back next week for the third and final post on talent: how to interpret feedback in a way that helps you become a better writer.