On Talent

The big question — do you have talent? This Oldie but Goodie will make you think and make you laugh (but hopefully not make you cry).

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Do You Have Talent?

Can talent be taught or are you just born with it? Have you got it? How do you know?

It’s an awkward thing to talk about, right up there with prescriptions for odd body parts and the balance in your checking account. It’s easy to say other people aren’t talented but you’d never admit that you do – or don’t have talent yourself. The subject engenders great anxiety; you run the gamut from suspecting you are talented to seriously doubting that. Maybe you’re not talented – you’re proficient. Can proficiency, nurtured daily, blossom into talent?

I believe that most writers with talent are born with it. And once given that gift, become 1) a savant who soars meteorically with no formal training, 2) dead to it because they are not encouraged or courageous enough to explore it or 3) doggedly committed to developing and shaping that talent until they find a way to use and express it. Guys, we want to shoot for options 1 and 3.

Writing talent is a bit ephemeral; those who read professionally can tell immediately if a writer really has a gift or if they are just a well trained mechanic. But it’s hard to describe; it’s as if a ghost walked through you. There’s a ripple of something impossible to nail down. Proficient writers may be engaging – but not haunting. Writers with no natural knack for it, well, that’s like nails on a chalkboard.

How do you know if you have talent? Well, the Wave-inatrix not only cannot diagnose each writer theoretically but would never be so presumptuous as to make such a sweeping proclamations. Who can really define talent? Who can be the final word on that?

That said, here are some indications that you might have natural writing talent:

You write all sorts of things, not just scripts – and you always have. You have boxes, piles, notebooks and cocktail napkins covered with writing.

You love words. You love the way they sound, you spell them correctly, you use them inventively, you look things up, you’re a word stickler. Admit it, you’re a word freak.

You have been told for literally years that “you should write.” By people in the position to know, i.e., not your mom and best friend.

You won a poetry or short story contest in grade school. It was horribly embarrassing but secretly the zenith of your fourth grade experience.

You read a lot. In fact, you have a sliding pile of great books by your bedside. You have been banned from the local used book shop for overshopping. It’s an obsession.

You have been published somewhere: a newsletter, a small pamphlet, a magazine. Doesn’t matter how large or small the publication. Doesn’t matter if you got paid.

You keep a journal – and have for years – and it’s philosophic and melodic. Okay and sometimes whiny but you have a primal need to write down your feelings; you love to hear yourself write.

You are a bit mercenary; you are strangely, stubbornly, stoically disinterested when some jackass doesn’t like your work. Unless they are an editor or teacher and your work will improve with their help.

Sometimes your writing is intensely personal and not fit for public consumption. Other times it is absolutely directed at readers. You know the difference.

You hear a rhythm in words; you love the way they sound together. You might spend a whole day murmuring “mellifluous” to yourself.

When you write, the world stops. It’s the best thing ever and you never want to stop, even if you never make money doing it because that’s never really been the point.

You really will never, ever, be truly convinced you have talent. Rather, you aspire to have talent.

You may need to rethink whether writing is really your talent if:

Your grasp of language is weak and you really don’t care that much.

You don’t read very much; who has time?

You have never written anything but a script and you’re not interested, either. Poetry is for wusses, the last journal you owned had a key and you were 13.

You’ve never been told that your writing really had an emotional impact on someone. And no, that “poem” on the bathroom stall doesn’t count.

You make a lot of spelling and usage mistakes – and it doesn’t bother you that much; that’s why there’s spell check.

You’ve never bothered with a class; you don’t need to tend natural genius and besides, you’d miss reruns of The Office.

You get defensive when anybody criticizes your writing; your writing is and always has been unassailable!

You’re convinced you have talent and you know this because your mom and best friend have told you so.

You’re exploring screenwriting because, to be absolutely honest, you heard screenwriters can make a lot of money.

More than anything, writing is a weird obsession; we love it, we hate it, we hope to succeed, but mainly we just can’t stop. Yes, it is absolutely true that some writers are more talented than others. But in the spectrum of writing out there today, everything from literary fiction to essays to how-to and cookbooks, there may be a place for you. Maybe it isn’t screenwriting, but if you love to write – keep doing it and see which discipline is the place for you. Don’t be hasty to judge whether others have talent unless you’re being paid to make such a slippery call. If you’re not such a whiz with words – work on that. Conversely, if you are a writing savant, if your grocery lists are what others would enshrine as great poetry, maybe you need some discipline and focus.

Nobody can truly say with finality who has talent and who does not. The lists above are facetious. Mostly. In my experience working with writers, I have noticed a strange inverse relationship between writers who claim to have talent and those who really do. The best scripts I have read were given to me tentatively and the worst usually arrive with a red carpet and fanfare. It’s quite interesting to me that those most convinced they have talent are generally dead wrong.

In a world filled with great writers, large and small, published and unpublished, it is dangerous to assume you are a genius. Humility is a good thing. For those who just aren’t sure, here’s the thing: Keep trying. Validation from a professional source, whether that be a publication, an agent, teacher or competition is incredibly valuable. Keep working on developing your writing skills but have realistic expectations. You may never be Don DeLillo but maybe you’ll be Janet Evanovitch. Hey, don’t laugh; she’s rich. And say what you will, she can obviously spin a tale. Serially.

Tell you one thing, I’m smart enough to avoid the dangerous, thorn-lined path of who is a “real” writer: Ludlum versus DeLillo, King versus Poe, Fitzgerald versus Chabon, Frey, Palahniuk, Alexie Sherman, Danielle Steele…oh, it’s just going to turn into a brawl. Tastes are completely subjective but whether a writer has “talent” is easier to measure. I’m not at all a fan of William Faulkner’s work. But it is universally established that he was a formidably talented writer.

Measuring one’s own talent is difficult to do. Give yourself the ego-test: How much are you invested in being thought of as talented versus simply giving readers great pleasure?