Sail, great drabble!
Susan, congratulations!
Tracy: Well-- That call -- That call means you just murdered me. Mal: No, son. You murdered yourself. I just carried the bullet a while.
'The Message'
The Great Write Way, Act Three: Where's the gun?
A place for Buffistas to discuss, beta and otherwise deal and dish on their non-fan fiction projects.
sj - Jul 20, 2008 4:55:28 am PDT #360 of 6681
"There are few hours in life more agreeable than the hour dedicated to the ceremony known as afternoon tea."
sumi - Jul 20, 2008 9:24:16 am PDT #361 of 6681
Art Crawl!!!
Sailaweigh - loved it!
Susan - that's excellent - on both counts.
Laga - Jul 20, 2008 10:33:58 am PDT #362 of 6681
You should know I'm a big deal in the Resistance.
Congratulations, Susan!
Lee - Jul 20, 2008 10:35:31 am PDT #363 of 6681
The feeling you get when your brain finally lets your heart get in its pants.
The torn challenge is now closed.
The new challenge is play.
Beverly - Jul 20, 2008 2:28:17 pm PDT #364 of 6681
Days shrink and grow cold, sunlight through leaves is my song. Winter is long.
Congratulations, Susan!
Sail, I lovelovelove that drabble. So...US!
Allyson - Jul 20, 2008 2:52:36 pm PDT #365 of 6681
Wait, is this real-world child support, where the money goes to buy food for the kids, or MRA fantasyland child support where the women just buy Ferraris and cocaine? -Jessica
I've been trying to explain the difference between a skilled writer and a talented writer (of course, one hopes you have a bit of both, but without talent, you're fuck out of luck).
I've been dealing with someone who thinks it's all very easy. Think of a marketable idea, and write it all down. That's all.
If only.
I'm so frustrated. I can't seem to find a way to explain it in metaphor. I've tried architect/carpenter, physicist/engineer.
He just seems to discount talent as something non-existent. Everything is skill, and anyone can learn a skill. Ergo, anyone can be a great writer. Not just a good writer, but a great one.
Am I explaining this well? I feel like I'm incoherent.
Dana - Jul 20, 2008 2:56:52 pm PDT #366 of 6681
"I'm useless alone." // "We're all useless alone. It's a good thing you're not alone."
Tell him to get back to you after he's had his first book published.
sumi - Jul 20, 2008 3:00:07 pm PDT #367 of 6681
Art Crawl!!!
Oh, you ARE.
I think we need examples.
I'm not good with writers. . .but say - that guy who does the painting on PBS? Sure - he has skills but say, Frans Hals - he's got talent AND skill.
Talent is the raw material - you can't teach it - it's either there or not. Skill includes all the tools you can teach to make talent into something. You can teach someone the skills but if they don't have the talent - it's not going to sing.
Ailleann - Jul 20, 2008 3:11:26 pm PDT #368 of 6681
vanguard of the socialist Hollywood liberal homosexualist agenda
What's his field, Allyson? Maybe there's a metaphor to be found in what he does...
I think a decent example of talent vs. skill is this footage of a robotic clarinet player "performing" Flight of the Bumblebee. This is what I would call skill, in that the robot has the skills to execute the mechanics of the piece. But I don't know that anyone would argue that this robot has the "talent" to actually play the piece of music.
Maybe not a good example, especially since it features a robot instead of a human, but...
Amy - Jul 20, 2008 3:15:21 pm PDT #369 of 6681
Because books.
Oh Allyson, I've been there. "I could do that! I'll just write down this story and it'll be great! Imagine my life as a bestselling author!"
Talent is complicated. Take, say, Stephen King. He has skill, yes. But his talent is more than his ability to write down a fairly coherent story with a beginning, a middle, and an end. It's his particular slant on the stories he tells, and his focus on the dark places in the human mind, that set him apart. And if he tried to write a happy, cheerful, children's book? I think it would probably suck -- even if the sentences were constructed grammatically.
Does that help?