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.

You goof. Everyone on the board squeed out loud when you brought it up.

But I get how on certain days, and in certain mindsets, it's hard to be know for yourself.

OK, lets try a sports metaphor. I don't think anyone would disagree that Michael Jordan was one of the greats in Basketball. He is one of the players people argue was the greatest, but you don't have to buy that to argue that he was up there.

And tell your friend that that is something you are born with. Sure if Michael had not practiced and worked damn hard he never would have amounted to anything as a basketball player. But all his practice and hard work let him become a great player specifically because he had that talent. Something in him meant that if he worked hard and practice daily he would be a great player. And if your friend could go back in time, kidnap himself as a three year old, and give himself really intensive training, your friends till could not outplay Jordan.

And that applies to you too. Of course you had to work hard; without hard work you would be writing mediocre fan fiction or blog posts with the occasionally really good sentence to show you could do more if you applied yourself. But without the talent you could work twice as hard as you do and never be anything but mediocre. It takes both talent and hard work to be as good as you are. And I don't think writing talent is anything mystical. It may be a genetic quirk, or result of early childhood experiences, or some interaction between the two. Most basketball players have the characteristic of being over six feet tall. You have the characteristic of being over six foot talented. Nothing mystical about it.