Being talented is awesome. It allows you to pick up a particular subject or activity with great ease. (In this case, let's say it's about writing.) This, in turn, gives you a tremendous leg up on everyone else who wants to be a writer. Anyone who cares about writing wishes they had talent.
But talent is also its own curse. Talent means that your only experience with writing is that it's easy. When you eventually come to a wall, and it's actually hard, you panic. Why isn't it working right? How come I'm not awesome anymore? It's because you only had people with no ability to compare to. Eventually, those who put in the time and keep trying learn all the skills and abilities your talent naturally gave you.
Talented people generally burn out. Child prodigies tend to become adult nobodies. But those without talent but much determination reach great heights. It is because they had no talent, because they had to learn every single aspect with no innate bonuses that they so thoroughly understand the subject. They had to drill and practice and memorize all those things that you know how to use but don't really know how to explain (which means you have a limited ability to use it well).
Without talent, it takes so much longer to achieve what prodigies achieve so quickly. But do not worry too much about it. What matters more is not how quickly you sprout, but how well you bloom. And those who bloom later bloom more gloriously.
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The biggest thing that the first generation of writing scholars contributed was maybe a sense that the mind is all about making sense out of experience. It will make sense from the smallest shred. They don't mention this example, I don't think, but I remember reading about how any shape, even the most contorted un-face-like squiggle, will become a face to the mind when you put two eyes in it. Try it. Suddenly it makes sense: "it's a face!" your mind says after seeing the eyes get drawn in, and sometimes you can even get an expression out of it. Meaning from shreds! ¶ But my point is that language users make meaning by using language. If you continue using language, people usually develop something with enough potential and implications to revise it -- and that's a sign you're on to a project. In other words, writing makes meaning; you don't have to use writing merely to summarize stuff you've already figured out or stuff you've been told. Writing is a process that I've learned to trust to exceed my own initial motives, and that has been very helpful. Thanks for making me think yet again, Kevin!
ReplyDeleteYo, Kevin, I wonder if you could post excerpts from your own stories, or link to them. Nothing fancy.
ReplyDeleteI would be quite happy to share my work with you. Not much is saved online, but I could perhaps save it as a google doc and post links on the PWR group. Would that work, or did you have another idea?
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