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.

Allyson, Google found these links for me, perhaps they will help: [link] and [link]

A personal example: I enjoy music, but I have no talent for it. After four semesters of piano classes in high school, I had learned enough basic skills to read and play simple pieces of music, but I couldn't make the transition from hitting the notes to making music. The subtleties of timing and pressures and perception that show personality, style, and emotion musically just aren't in me.

that's pitch perfect, dcp!

Continuing dcp's analogy, I can interpret music, but not create it. I love to sing, and I'm pretty good at it, but I have no concept of how people compose songs. The idea of creating a song that didn't exist before is foreign to me. Not only do I lack that talent, I can't even comprehend it. How can you hear a song you've never heard?

However, I've been creating stories that didn't exist before as long as I can remember, and writing them down off and on since I was 8. Inventing characters and telling stories about them is just what I do. I don't know why, and I was almost grown before I realized there was anything unusual about it. I honestly thought everyone told themselves stories to while away the time, even if they didn't write them down, because it really is that natural for me.

I'm still learning to write well. But I believe the desire to tell stories--talent, compulsion, whatever it is--is innate.