The torn challenge is now closed.

The new challenge is play.

Congratulations, Susan!

Sail, I lovelovelove that drabble. So...US!

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.

Tell him to get back to you after he's had his first book published.

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.

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...

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?

It helps. I think. I'm starting to think that there's no way to describe how talent is different than skill in a way that resonates with someone who doesn't seem to believe that talent exists in the way that I don't believe ghosts exist.

Tim always says to me, when I'm blue about a piece of writing, "all men aren't created equal. some are born with talent. you were born with talent."

It's kind of his way of saying I'm drawing from a well that doesn't exist for others, and to respect the well. Or something. I dunno. he's crazy.

He's an engineer, and I've seen this small percentage of the engineering population who don't get things like intuitiveness or metaphor. I think maybe that's the issue? Or that I'm being mean. I think I'm being mean, probably.

Well, Tim is right, for one. And you're probably not being mean. There are definitely strictly right- or left-brain people out there. Engineering (from my very limited understanding of what an engineer does) seems like a very objective thing, for one.

But ... surely there are engineers who went beyond? Who saw something no one had seen before, and created it? Much like a whole lot of people can build a perfectly reasonable house, but very few people are going to see a house's potential the way Frank Lloyd Wright did.

You have e, by the way.

Holy crap do I have e. So far, my beta readers are thinking well of a work I was feeling crappy about this morning. I have lots of thinking to do.