Talent, a Stone and Pieces of String

“I don’t know if I have the Talent to be a writer,” you say.

Put another way, “Is there any point in, I mean really, c’mon now, my even trying?”

“First,” you say, “I’m sure I don’t have the Talent. And then I think I do because I want it so badly. I read what some other people have written and think I could never do that. Maybe I should just forget about all this writing business. And then the next day I think I really want to write. Mysteries, maybe. Science Fiction. Something. And then other days I think ‘this is stupid’. And then I get an idea for something else and I try again and I work harder. And then I trip over yet another difficulty.”

“Some days, my Doubts take over my life and I spend all my time trying to figure out if I have the Talent, and I don’t really write anything. Or I write something I am just so dissatisfied with, and then I think what’s the point?”

“I’ve read all kinds of articles such as 7 Easy Steps To Writing. Amazon lists over 20,000 titles under How To Write A Book. If I had any Talent, couldn’t I just pick one of these recipes and follow it? Yes? No?”

“I’ve read about successful writers and everything seems to come so naturally for them. If I had any Talent, wouldn’t that be, shouldn’t that be, the same for me?”

It’s almost always there, isn’t it? Your Doubt. That stone in the writer’s shoe.

But, look around, up from your foxhole for a moment, and you will see that if you had no Talent, you would have no Doubt.

We have all looked at published authors, but all we see from them is the Porsche in the showroom, not the grease stains on the garage floor.

Sitting in your favourite writing room when it sometimes feels like solitary confinement; staring at the blank page; getting halfway through and realizing the rest of the story just won’t work. Hours spent editing; no one else understanding or caring about what you are doing; not making a dime but instead paying a reading fee for your work. Work they probably won’t publish. And, if they do publish it, your only pay may be inclusion entombed in an obscure anthology, something not even your cousin in Winnipeg will ever read again, cluttering up your bookshelf, calling out to you for one more re-edit, just to get it right. With all the worry and work you put into it, you can’t bring yourself to just toss the thing out. Now can you?

There is no multiple choice test for Talent the way there is for, say, knowledge. But there are hints, pieces of string, lying around waiting to be picked up.

You write something. You think it has possibilities. You pick up that piece of string.

You say you have a deep yearning to write. Do you have a deep yearning to pole vault or repair small engines or do close-up magic? Yearning is another piece of string.

If you didn’t have anything to say, you wouldn’t even think about writing. But you do have something to say, and a voice to say it with, and you know it. That’s another piece of string.

 As writers, we sometimes pause at the intersection of Walk and Don’t Walk, but we don’t need to live there a minute longer. There are lots of reasons to quit writing, but obsessing over whether or not you have the Talent is not one of them.

You have Talent. You know you do. Get your sweater dirty. 

Keep writing.