Office Hours

On Talent

Q.

Dear George,

Perhaps we’ve beaten these ideas of “rhythm” and “ear” to death, but in the course of our discussion—your brilliant thoughts and Story Clubbers’ thoughtful comments—I keep hearing this one word in my head (it happens when we discuss other elements of craft, as well), and it’s that word you mention briefly, almost as a throw-away, at the end of your response to Gail. “Talent.” Francine Prose said in Reading Like a Writer, that the only thing she could teach a writing student was how to become the best editor she can be. That’s it. In other words, and this, I suppose, goes without saying, but what the heck, I’ll say it anyway: you can’t teach talent. You can’t teach brilliance. I’ve noticed that the writers throughout time that we hold up in the highest esteem have one thing in common, and that appears to be a brilliant mind. Even if I don’t care for some particular famed author’s style, I always recognize the brilliance in their work. 

Aye, there’s the rub. 

I guess my questions would be these: Do you think rhythm and ear are directly proportional to talent and brilliance? Or can a decent writer’s work, and ear, be honed to brilliance through the study of craft, the reading of great writers’ works, and writing, writing, writing? Yes, we’ve talked about all of those things as necessary to sharpening our skills and improving our writing, and I know our skills can be honed, but ultimately, does it all boil down to that one little word? Talent? You either got it or you don’t? 

I thank you, George, for your talent and brilliance as a writer and as a teacher, and the generosity you show here on Story Club in sharing those gifts of yours with all of us.

Fond regards,

A.

Dear Questioner,

Yes, thank you for this question. This is a subject I’ve been wanting to write about for a long time now.

One of the potentially problematic things about giving writing advice all the time is the sneaking suspicion that one is implying that great writing can be accomplished by craft alone – by hard work, by absorbing good advice, by following good practice habits, and so on. 

The question of talent – well, that’s easier to set off to one side as being, maybe, a little bit in bad taste. 

But of course, as you touch upon, dear Questioner, it seems like, maybe, it’s… everything (?)       

What is “talent?”  Well, I suppose it’s the ability to do that which is excellent (that which astounds, amazes, and so on).  It’s a bit circular, really: if you can write something that astounds, that is, de facto, proof of talent.  Is there a way to predict it, to diagnostically spot it early, and issue some sort of reassuring certification, that one can show at family parties?

I wish, but no.  

You ask: “can a decent writer’s work, and ear, be honed to brilliance through the study of craft, the reading of great writers’ works, and writing, writing, writing?”  That, I’m not sure about.  I kind of feel like: “Well, it can’t hurt.”  A decent writer’s work and ear can be honed to tangible improvement, for sure.  Is that enough to yield “brilliance?”  That would depend on the qualities of that “decent” writer, I suppose.

What I think we want to keep in mind is that it’s not all about chops and pyrotechnics and techniques and so on.  It is, really, about heart; about a human being looking at life through her own lens and thinking and feeling it through and then making something – even something very simple – that says something new and truthful – something that reaches out to the reader in a spirit of commiseration. 

A reader can tolerate an absence of fireworks, and even some awkwardness, if he feels another human being looking at him with respect and fondness.

(Maybe that’s talent: the ability to convey, in writing, respect and fondness.)

I always say that we work on craft to discover the extent of our talent.  As in sports, I suppose – we train, in order to become the best athlete we can be…and then we see.  We see how we do in the game, we see how we do against other players, and so on.  (We can’t know how good we are until we get to be as good as we can be.)

Although here, in sports and art, there’s a split in the road.  Part of the joy of being an artist resides in the feeling that we have accomplished something rare and unique to ourselves and (maybe, if we’re lucky) have been rewarded for it – by cultural attention, reviews, praise, maybe even money. 

But another part of that joy resides simply in the doing of the thing – whether it sells or not, whether anyone reads and likes it or not – actually whether it’s any good or not. 

If we’re being blunt and honest, we might have to say that the second path is available and welcoming to every one of us, “talented” or not. 

The first bit – the accomplishment/praise/reward part - is less ecumenical.  Only a very few get to experience those things.  Many of us got into art in the first place with a mind to get those things, I suppose – I know I did. 

So, the first bit is harsh, honestly. 

One thought I’ve often had about success is this: none of it is solid or is guaranteed to last.  A supposedly great book can be forgotten or become dated.  Laurels fade pretty quickly.  But the one thing that seems pretty resilient is the pleasure one takes while writing – the alteration of the mind that takes place as we work a thing up the ladder, making it sharper and better – the person we are in those moments, that’s ours to keep.

Wouldn’t you love, for example, to be Dickens, as he was creating “A Christmas Carol?”  He must have been in a rare state of awareness and love, to have created that masterpiece (and so quickly).

But, as we’ve discussed here before, a given writer can express herself in many modes, which can switch on and off over the course of a career.  And a writer can, by way of craft, urge different modes forward from within her self – she can change.  She can urge different parts of herself out into the light.

And this, too – this ability to shapeshift, to discover one’s most powerful mode, is also a form of “talent.” 

Another form of talent might simply be the ability to gauge when one is being interesting on the page – to be able, by some method, to guess at, or feel, how an imaginary reader might be reacting to the work at hand.  Can we get better at that?  (Yes, I really do think so.) 

But yet another aspect of this mysterious thing called “talent” is that each of us has a different ability to improve a given ability, if that makes sense.  I may be a wonderful writer who never really gets better; I may be a so-so writer with a phenomenal ability to get less so-so.  This (how fast can we grow, and to what extent?) is yet another thing we’re trying to discover through our work.

I’ve often thought that, at the level of our MFA writers at Syracuse, it’s all about “the talent for having talent.”  Everyone who gets in is wildly talented – we admit 6 out of a field of, usually, around 500-700 applicants.  So “talent” is a given but…what can a given writer do with his or her particular talent?  That seems to be what we’re investigating in our program.  How adept is a given writer at figuring out his strengths and weaknesses (and making a book out of that dynamic)?  How well does he do with adversity and rejection?  Can he learn to revise, or is he going to be stuck with his first drafts forever?

And it’s very difficult to guess about these things, just based on the (amazing) admissions samples these writers have used to get in.  We have to (and they have to) wait (and work) to find out.

But, again, a person can’t know if he possesses a given talent without doing the work.

It would be kind of nice if we could put our finger into the good old TalentMeter and the meter would spit out a little piece of paper, saying, “Pulitzer in 3-5 years!” or “Give it up and concentrate on the day job” – but no such meter exists.  And who would believe it, if it did?

Writers who publish are people who have found a way to say what they have to say that is enjoyable for a reader to read.  That, actually, has, in my experience, a nebulous relation to the question of whether a person has something original or interesting to say – I’ve had many students who were brilliant thinkers and talkers but didn’t, somehow, find a way to make their prose work, in that “communicating with a reader” way.  It’s mysterious, really, and frustrating for those writers, I’m sure.  And, conversely, a given writer can have not very much new to say at all, but can have a charming way of filling up the page with what they do have to say…and then do very well in publication.

So: we have to do the work, to find out what we might have to offer, and in what mode.  We make a sacrifice on the altar of art, and say a few prayers…and then we wait.

To answer your question – I do think that we see evidence of talent in things like rhythm and ear and all of that.  But the real evidence of talent is that feeling we get, when reading a wonderful writer, that we are in good and wise hands – in the presence of an unusual mind, that has been out in the world and has some unusual and defensible (and helpful? Consoling?) views on it.

And in this, I think, there’s room for hope for all of us.

Because the mind that we have can be improved and broadened and challenged and tested.  It can be changed.  We can become wiser and more interested in the world, and more tolerant of variation within it.  We can take what we’re born with, and develop it – again, of course, perhaps vexingly, subject to our individual talent to do so.

We can travel and do amazing feats of research and open our hearts and minds up to people unlike us, even to people we are “against.”  We can do all that to our hearts content – nobody can stop us.

And, for me, this has always been exciting – the thought that, if I broaden my personhood, by reading and thinking and discussion and travel and adventure (and meditation, and prayer), my work will absolutely get bigger – it will ask harder, more pertinent questions (because why wouldn’t it, having been out in the world like that)? 

Reading, especially, is important, just so we see what’s been done (and what, therefore, we don’t have to, and better not, do).  Reading is the foundation we build, on which we hope to perform our little flickers of New, of Brilliant, of Original.

Still, and yes, however: talent makes a ceiling for each of us.  It just does. 

I think it’s valuable to keep in mind that some great writing is actually a skillful accommodation of what might, at first, have seemed to be a shortfall.  Or, let’s say, some writers start out trying to be this kind of writer, find out they don’t have “the talent” for that – and then pivot to a Plan B – being a different kind of writer, the kind of writer that they DO have a talent for, thus converting “defect” into “strength.”  I often use this example: if I really wanted to write Shostakovichian string quartets but, whenever I played them, people dozed off - there’s a message in that. And, if whenever I got out my accordion and played a polka, people laughed and danced and felt alive and loved me - well, there’s a message in that too.

The ability to pivot like that…that’s a talent. The ability to simply note, in the first case, that everyone is asleep and, in the second case, dancing - that’s a talent. The ability to say, “I am not this work of art I’ve made. It is from me but it is not me. Therefore, I can choose what mode to work in, since I am large and contain multitudes” - that’s a talent.

In the end, as Robert Frost once said (or as I always say he said): “Don’t worry; work.”  We are writing to find out: if we have that elusive thing we are calling talent, if we have anything new to say, and so on.

Failure, so-called, might mean that we “don’t have talent,” but I don’t like that thought.  It doesn’t help me do my work. I’d prefer to say that failure means we haven’t yet found the exact flavor of our talent – the mode in which we sound and read most like our true self. 

And, truth be told, we may never find it.  We have to accept that possibility, in order for the journey to have the flavor of a true adventure. 

But what a privilege, to continue to assert our right to keep looking for originality and our true voice, even until the very end.

Abe Lincoln, offering this drummer boy some thoughts on talent. And the drummer boy is thinking, “Hey, Abe, what’s an “Audio Tour,” anyway?”