I'm going to echo what a few others have said here. First, I imagine good to fall somewhere in the mid-list to moderately successful range, if not currently then potentially. That said, I think it takes both talent and toil, but the emphasis is on toil. Sure, it takes some talent to develop a way with words, I guess you could call it. But it takes toil, lots of it, to hone that talent and give yourself skill. And then it takes toil to make it through the first draft and then all the subsequent drafts until the final product is good enough. I think a writer could probably get by with some talent, but it takes toil -- tenacity -- to endure the uncertainty, rejection, and disappointment. It takes hard work to become successful and stay that way.
All modern research about top performance in any numbers of states that there nothing supporting that talent exists. It also states the raw practice takes you far, but the ones the reach the top practice has to be done more precise and in a more aware way then people normally do.
I don't think this is quite correct. Particularly in educational research there is strong evidence that individuals do have talents in particular areas. I have to read a lot of other people's written work and in my limited experience there does seem to be certain people who 'get' what good writing looks like more than others. To answer the original posts question, I must agree with the majority of posts on here. I believe talent makes a good writer, I think toil makes a good writer. It is difficult to imagine somebody succeeding with only one of the two. Phlogiston
How about this: Toil makes a writer; talent makes him a good writer. Someone with talent who doesn't toil is not going to produce much of anything. Someone who works hard may produce millions of published words, but without talent, it will be mostly drivel.
Oh. I need to clarify. The thesis of the book "Talents is overrated" by George Colvin, with a with a complete list of studies etc wasn't that there isn't things that comes more easily to you but that talent defined as "Reaching a performance with less practice then other people need" haven't been able to be supported at all in any study.
I would also have to disagree with this - in all fields, no matter what they may be, you will always find those who have natural raw talent - those that can do things better than all others. You yourself will possess talents, as do I, as does everyone. Not saying those talents cannot be improved upon, but they are certainly way ahead of most without even having to try.
How much of talent is innate, and how much simply reflects an early obsession with reading and a dedication to find out how to work that magic? The toil doesn't begin with a first writing class or the first decision to write something for others to look upon. It may begin with telling stories around a campfire, or sketching comics featuring your friends against the evil humorless teacher who cramps your style. How much child's "play pretend" is later interpreted as talent? Play is not usually called work, but from a developmental perspective, it is.
The answer to all dichotomies is "Both." I think most people put work into areas where they already have talent. If you're talented at something and you enjoy it, you're going to work at it and do it a lot. And yeah - humans are born with different aptitudes. We're not all carbon copy blank slates. I could work at basketball for the rest of my life and never be as good as Michael Jordan. I have a lot of respect for Stephen King because in his book On Writing he doesn't do the whole kumbaya everyone can be a great writer if they just try BS. He says that competent writers can become good writers if they work at it, but that's about all the mobility there is between levels of writing. And I do think there is a parallel there with the American cultural mythos about social classes and mobility between them, but that's another topic. Also I think your answer would depend on your definition of "good writer". Mine has absolutely nothing to do with being traditionally published. I'm finding a lot of stuff published serially on blogs for free these days that I think is much better than most of what I see at the corporate bookstores. To me getting published means "some corporation thought I might make money for them, which means that most likely I conformed to their rules and played it safe" and that's about it. I grew up reading late 18th century and 19th century classics. My opinions on writing quality were formed by Jane Austen, Charlotte and Emily Bronte, Charles Dickens, and Edgar Allan Poe. So I guess my personal definition is someone who can write an interesting story with deep characters and beautifully put together sentences. And it helps if behind the sentences and characters and story there's a meaning, a deeply felt theme about the experience of being alive. And I don't mean theme like literary criticism theme. I think I mean something personal and immediate and real, not pretentious theorizing. So my bar is pretty high. And to meet my bar, it does take hard work and putting in the hours to skill up. But I think there also has to be an inborn quality there, of personality and perception and ability with language and words. I can look at stuff I wrote when I was younger and at the update I published yesterday and see a vast difference, an improvement based in learning about writing and putting in lots of practice. But even when I was young, I was writing in my second grade journal "I am going to be a true story writer." My teachers from first grade on up through graduation told me I should be a writer. I was getting ovations when I read my stuff out loud in class in eighth grade, and in high school I made a girl cry in creative writing. So yes, I think I've always had talent. And now I'm working as hard as I can to take the raw material and work it and shape it into something greater than itself. My answer is both nature and nurture, talent and toil. And from what I've read of pop science on the subject, nature and nurture are so tied up together that there's not really a way to separate them.
So what you're saying is there isn't such a thing as talent exactly, just varying levels of aptitude for learning? That to me is talent redefined.
I think most people can come to write pretty well with hard work and somewhere to learn the techniques. But I also believe there are some things which are hard or impossible to learn, like imagination. When you've spent 10 000 hours honing your skills and learnt every technique there is to learn, having a skill like imagination will give you an edge that some writers can't beat even with 20 000 hours of training.
I agree. I did the same sports training as my brother's I never won a cup at anything lol I enjoyed it and worked hard, but I wasn't even going to manage average
I'm firmly in the talent camp. And not because it provides any excuse to he who is not inclined,- re. Lazy!,-to maximize his efforts. Just that the Clydesdale with maximum work is never going to Place in the money in The Hemingway Stakes, when running with a field of Thoroughbreds, who make no effort at all, but had the chance to be "Born to Run". But don't ask them to pull the wagon!. Needless to say the true "Champion" has a good Trainer and diligently does his daily workouts.
the Jakers Irish saying you can't make a donkey into a racehorse There is a lovely episode of the kids show where Piggly tries to make his Dad's donkey into a racehorse.
Just as what I read in the book, Writing and Selling your First Novel (Forgot the exact title but that's pretty much that): A writer is made, not born!!! Natural talent may give people a boost/headstart to being good, but still how you'll persevere to enhance that gift will greatly determine what you'll reach. It's all about ATTITUDE!!!
Wrong analogy. Horses are bred to perform specific jobs. They don't have a choice in the matter either, and conditioned to perform the job well. Also physical differences are a harder thing to overcome. All these "I worked so hard at a physical activity but I didn't make it" really don't hold much when you're talking about writing. You can't grow five inches if you wanted to, but you can devote extra time to understanding a subject you can't quite grasp. Yep, A good attitude always helps. Couple that with know-how when it comes to learning and hard work and you've got yourself set up for progress.
I think there's atleast some aspects of writing that require inborn affinities. Sensitivity towards subtleties in moods, atmosphere and emotions, as well as empathy towards your readers are things that I can't imagine being taught in a class, presented on an Excel spreadsheet. Generally, stuff that requires "gut feeling" to get across succesfully in your writing ... gut feeling is something you have or you don't. The same gut feeling is in many cases required when distinguishing good from bad, and to me, the ability to honestly distinguish good from bad is one of the more overlooked of the critical skills of a good writer. That being said, I don't think many people lacking these sensitivities would even consider becoming writers in the first place. Or they would quickly find something else to do with their time.
I think you can learn to listen to your "gut feeling", although some may never be as good at it as others. Other things, which, at first, may seem to require gut feeling, like writing descriptions and dialogue, may actually be analysed and explained to a large degree.
One must have the "gift" which creates the desire to write. The desire sustains one through the difficult learning curve and the countless rejections. One never stops learning how to write.
With all due respect, I would have to disagree. "Gut feeling" might not be taught, but still I believe that it isn't something that can't be learned. Experience is the greatest mentor, that is why I believe that through experience, you could learn how to master the thing you call "gut feeling".
I think it is easy to forget that writing is a physical activity. Involves putting pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard as it were). It is tempting to think of the mind as a formless, ethereal thing, but remember, your mind is rooted in your brain. And that brain is a physical thing. So I do think there are 'built in' aptitudes in the same way that some people are naturally better than others at certain more obviously physical activities (i.e. running - having more or less fast twitch/slow twitch muscles). The way I am, the way I'm built, the experiences that have shaped my brain to this point mean that no matter how hard I try, I will never be a Field Medal winning mathematician. Nor will a fully gifted natural mathematician ever win a fields medal without effort. Having said that, once you stop talking about the extremes of being absolutely outstanding, there is a middle ground. I suspect most people could get a decent maths A level given the right effort and teaching. Similarly, I reckon most people could write a decent novel. Maybe not an astounding one, but a decent one.
Skills and creativity are really two very different, almost opposite things. But like I said before, if you don't have the creativity in you, you'd probably never come to this forum asking writing questions in the first place.
Try telling a mathematician that what they do isn't creative. I love writing and the 'creative arts' but I wouldn't go so far as to place it on a pedestal in its own special category. What did Einstein say was one of the most important thing for a theoretical physicist? Imagination. Similarly, engineers, sportsmen and even accountants can all show flair, personality and creativity in what they do. I think creativity is a very human trait which shines through in almost every area of endeavor. I certainly don't believe that the 'amount' of creativity individuals have is fixed and static.
In your example you were using an A grade examn in mathematics, which is hardly math on the level of Einstein. An A grade in math can be achieved through practice of pure skill alone -- memorizing pre-existing knowledge -- without any need for creativity. The same is not quite possible when it comes to writing a novel. My point was that your comparison makes a categorical mistake. To demonstrate the difference, imagine someone who is utterly tone-deaf taking either a degree in piano play or composition of original music -- the first would be possible with enough practice, simply by memorizing what keys to press in a sequence -- but this person would never make it as a composer.
In my worthless opinion, a good writer is built on experience, study, and research, just as everything else. Writing will create over time your own story-telling style, while reading will work on getting you new ingredients, corrections, and knowledge to add to your style. But even if you're a very tallented writer already, if you don't research on what you're writing about, you may end up with a very inconsistent story. In my case, I was always a good writer in Portuguese and English classes. Despite a few distraction grammar and spelling errors my short stories with a preset theme were always good enough to get a good classification. However, later on when I thought to myself that I actualy enjoyed writing, and I started writing on my own, my first attempts were a huge disgrace. And up to now I still I have a lot to improve and a lot to learn. And I have huge amounts of research to make every time I try to write something that needs more details about it. And by the way, Stephen King himself said that he still has tons of trash witten every year, and his novels are a shorter percentage that was worth publishing (He said something like that).
