"Not Having It"
November 20, 2000
7:39 a.m.
Gervace asks from the sidebar: Do I think anyone can be a writer? And then goes on to clarify--do I think everyone can be a "commercial" writer. This begs the question of what a commercial writer is, of course. But for the purposes of this discussion, I'll say a commercial writer is someone who makes a sizeable chunk of their livelihood with the written word. The answer is no. I don't think everyone can be a commercial writer. But I don't think talent has much to do with it. Yes, there is an element of talent required, and I suppose it's possible that there are people who don't have that talent. But I don't believe that this is the divining factor for whether someone will be successful or not. Outstanding raw talent is not a requirement for being a commercial writer--you can tell that from reading a lot of the stuff that gets published. There are a lot of people that I would consider to have limited talent that are doing well in fields they love. Which is what I think is really required. Most people who fail at writing don't love it as much as they say they do. If they did, they would do it for free forever. It's the same with most everything. We tend to use sports metaphors a lot. And generally they hold up pretty well. I even used one on this topic myself once. But there is a key difference. A sport generally does require a certain physical capability. It's easy to point to a person who doesn't "have it" and say they won't succeed. Linda Dunn even pointed to Billy Keller and said he "didn't have it" in response to the post I just linked to...but you know, Billy (who was five-five and played in the ABA) somehow managed to draw a professional paycheck for a ton of years and win a few professional championships despite not "having it." I would be happy to "not have it" like that. The difference, though, is that writing, like most jobs, is not really a competition. Yes, there are a certain number of slots available. But you're really not competing with anyone but yourself. Writing is an art form. And a readership gets built on whether enough people think your writing is interesting. Being interesting is different from having "talent." Bradbury has talent. Stephenson is interesting. Both are outstanding reads. And I'll note Bradbury is interesting, and Stephenson has talent. Just not in the same proportion...my opinion only, of course. The only "requirement" for being a commercial writer is that you be interesting to 40,000-200,000 people, and that this figure grow over time. The real question is, do you love the work? If so, you cannot be discouraged for long because the work will bring you out of it. If not, then you'll discourage yourself enough to quit. It's really that simple. This also means it's not worth discouraging anyone. First, who knows what their goal is--they may have a different definition of "successful" and by raining on their parade, you'll pollute a successful soul. But beyond that, the work is self-defining. New writers really don't need any help discouraging themselves, thank you. So I say, yeah, there are people who don't love the work enough to be successful. It's hard, after all. But I wouldn't confuse it with the statement that they weren't talented enough. There's no shame to not wanting to be a writer, fer crying out loud. In this field, I believe talent is viewpoint--and we've all got one of those. The key is working hard enough to understand how to expose that viewpoint in an interesting way. And that, I believe, is where craft steps in.   Have a great day.  Like you know anything, Ron... Daily Persistence is © Ron Collins |
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