Are we born writers or do we learn to be writers?

I just posted a response on another thread in which I said that I think a person can not learn to be a writer. Obviously we can learn to write better, but don't we have to have some talent at the start?
I'm not sure if I was right in what I said. I have been "writing" in some form since I was a kid. I have just always felt like a "writer" and it has always been important to me. But can a person become a writer?
I guess I like to think of it as a natural talent because then I can say that I was born a writer.
What do you all think? Are we born with it, do we learn it, is it a gift or a process?

By the way the overuse of the word "writer" in this post is absolutely disgusting. Sorry! I'm too tired to do anything about it.
SJ

Anyone can learn to be a writer. Being a storyteller, however, is another matter.

It is, as always, both.

I believe that everybody is born with talents, some stronger than others.

Which talents we use depends on a wide spectrum of things.

Through use our talents become more pronounced and useful.

So I believe that all are born writers, some learn to be writers.

minsue said:

Anyone can learn to be a writer. Being a storyteller, however, is another matter.

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That is an excellent differentiation.

It is very much a gift.
Of course, that isn't to say that people can't learn to write. There are very few things that people can't learn to do if they can't do it naturally: fly, sing, those sorts of things. With some cases, the people who were not born to something can become better than those who were. They have to work hard for success, so they don't get lazy.
That said, I think the best writers are those who feel they were born to do it. If you really don't like something, you'd have no reason to want to become better at it. If you love it and feel like you were born to do it, you strive to be good at it. I've read stories with bad grammar that were better than ones with perfect grammar, because the person with bad grammar really had a passion for what they were doing and it showed.
You'll enjoy watching someone dance more if they love to do it. You'll enjoy hearing someone sing more if they love to do it. Those who are born to write are born with raw talent and it's up to them to refine it. What may seem at first like a lack of talent can simply be a lack of refinement.
Okay, I'm going off on a tangent now, so I think I'll stop.

sophia jane said:

That is an excellent differentiation.

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Thank you. I know it intimately and it's one that infuriates me. I can write, but I can't tell a story. Grrrrr.

A bit of a tangent; i've seen so many people with talent waste it away because they didn't have determination and perseverance that it makes me sick.
I've started valuing hard work more than talent.

DrF

edited: yeeeha, over 100 posts. i can have a face now.

DrFreud said:

A bit of a tangent; i've seen so many people with talent waste it away because they didn't have determination and perseverance that it makes me sick.
I've started valuing hard work more than talent.

DrF

edited: yeeeha, over 100 posts. i can have a face now.

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That's because hard work is a choice and talent is a gift. I envy talent, I value talent, but I respect and admire hard work far more.


And congrats.

I was born an artist and had to expand my talent into written word. I didn't think to myself one day that maybe I should start writing and then make a conscious effort to learn how to do it. I just did it. It feels like an extension of artwork, and I do all that through instinct.

Everyone has a nature that is totally unique to themselves. Everyone is born as something that must be cultivated. That's not to say that everyones' individual talents always become cultivated, let alone realized at all, but they are there, always.

Hm gifted or not. As Bob Fosse once said "I can't make you a great dancer, but I can make you better." (Not exact - but apropos ) Not that I can :|

I agree with the variously expressed idea that you can learn the technique, but bone-deep talent is born.

I may be shouted down, but I think it's both.

What good is natural talent if you don't have the mechanics to express that talent?

What good are mechanics without the talent and the drive?

cloudy said:

I may be shouted down, but I think it's both.

What good is natural talent if you don't have the mechanics to express that talent?

What good are mechanics without the talent and the drive?

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You won't be shouted down. That's what I was talking about when I was discussing "cultivating" a person's talents. Even child prodigies begin as rough diamonds that need to be polished.

I'm not even gonna bother putting on my nature-vs-nurture hat right now. That's irrelevant.

I think we can all agree that a certain amount of training is necessary, or at least useful, for any form of expression. I love music and I invent my own harmonies to just about everything I hear, but it took me basically until a year ago to learn to read sheet music. Now harmonies aren't a passing thing for me; I can write them down. It's pretty cool. Imagine if Mozart had somehow never managed to play an instrument. Where would we be now? (Besides lacking about 630 compositions.) It's possible to have native talent but no ability to express it. Not bloody likely. But possible.

But how much of it does come from inside?

In doing the music I do, I've begun to learn quite a bit about polyphonic theory, about what notes sound nice together, and about how to dissect a chord and figure out what it is (Amin, Gmaj13, Fb6/4-sus4). These are useful talents: I've found myself in charge of an a cappella group and I end up generating most of our music. I sit with my ear to the speaker for three hours and write down what I hear. Then I print it and make copies and voila, we're singing Bohemian Rhapsody. And my friends A. and L. stare at me and wonder how the hell I do it.

In the meanwhile, I stare at THEM and wonder how THEY do it. Because these two friends of mine, over at UCDavis, compose their own music--something I couldn't do if my life depended on it. There's lyrics, there's backing vocals, there's instrumental accompaniment, there's harmony, there's... Heck, it sounds like something you might hear out of the radio! It's good! And I don't know how they do it! I put my pen to paper and dust comes out!

And so we reach this bizarre impasse where none of us can quite believe what the other is doing, but as to the thing WE'RE doing... Oh, well, it's easy, it's just this&this&this, c'mon, just give it a try, you'll be flying in no time. Seriously. It's easy. It ain't no miracle; anyone can do it. Even you, A; even you, L; even you, C.

And who knows.

We might be right.


~CWatson
(who needs a female-vocalist song by Sunday, 'cause now we're NOT doing Bohemian Rhapsody, 'cause people keep not attending the practices and we don't have time to LEARN it anymore, but that right there's a WHOOOOLE nother rant let's move on shall we?)

I don't know I think it depends on the person as to whether it's a little of both.
I don't know but what about all the child prodigies? Certainly they have heard music or seen art but they can't have learned it very well yet their inborn talent makes up for that.

When I write my story is just there all at once, from beginning to end. If I start a story with no ending it usually doesn't get finished.

DrFrued; Perhaps their talent isn't something that really interests them. Don't you do what most interests you unless it has to be done because it's a job? If I had a talent of, let's say, being a gifted pianist, I wouldn't follow through with it simply because playing the piano, while interesting, doesn't really appeal to my inner self desires.

This question bothered me a lot until recently. My father was a natural story teller, and when he spoke, would instinctively structure his anectodes so that his audience were riveted. He was a professional writer for forty years, and a journalist before that.

When I decided to "become" a full-time writer, I was very aware that I wasn't a natural story teller like my father. But after a while I realized that there are so many styles of fictional writing that it didn't matter all that much that story telling didn't come naturally to me: What comes out of me comes out of me.

Sub Joe said:

When I decided to "become" a full-time writer, I was very aware that I wasn't a natural story teller like my father. But after a while I realized that there are so many styles of fictional writing that it didn't matter all that much that story telling didn't come naturally to me: What comes out of me comes out of me.

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I'm not much of a story-teller either. I'm not as concerned with narrating a long string of events as I am with showing how people react and understand what happened in the first place, and so my stories don't have all that much scope and breadth. They usually just cover one or two events, but in those events I usually find enough to talk about and explore.

I don't think writing is necessarily a talent. What is a talent is a writer's sensitivity to the written word, and his or her sensitivity and imagination and ability to get into another's skin. Reading a lot can help with the first few, but I don't think these last few things can be learned.

Reading stories here, I think you can tell who has the gift and who doesn't. If the sentences clunk and are repetitious, if there's no give-and-take between the characters, if the form of the story seems lopsided and skewed, then you're dealing with someone who's not sensitive to these things.

I have fraternal twin daughters, and they were pretty much raised side by side. One of them will read when she has to but doesn't especially enjoy it. The other has the gift and is already writing stories and keeping journals. As far as I can tell, it's a personality thing.

---dr.M.

I don't think it's a matter of being born with a talent for it. I think it's a matter of being born with a drive for it. I have always been a creative person. I made a lot of my money in high school drawing things for people, and I have been a professional musician since I was sixteen. I never had even the slightest desire to be a writer, even though my aunt had been telling me since I was four years old that I was going to be one. My imagination was so well developed that I always pulled other people right into it with me, even adults.

One day when things weren't going so well for my band, I decided to try writing, since it was a project I could do without any outside help from anyone. In a band you're beholden to the other members to accomplish anything. I wrote a short story, just to see if I could do it, and it came out much better than I could have hoped. So, after two more warm-up stories, I dove into the novel.

I hadn't seen that aunt in fifteen years, as she has been divorced from my uncle, but I looked her up and took her one of the first copies of my novel when it came out. She recognized something in me even at that young age and she always tried to guide me toward it. I had to let her know she was right.

dr_mabeuse said:

I'm not much of a story-teller either. I'm not as concerned with narrating a long string of events as I am with showing how people react and understand what happened in the first place, and so my stories don't have all that much scope and breadth.

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Ah, see, you're missing something. Writing the reactions and feelings of people is still a story. People are the story. The characters become a living plot and the events the revolve around them are important only in how they impact them. That's a different kind of storyteller from those who give you a huge plot to consume.
I'm not stupid. People don't read my work for the intensely complicated plots. I've gotten a little better at it since I began writing again, but it's not something that comes very easily. People like my characters. It's a different angle, perhaps, but it's still storytelling.
That makes you a story-teller, and a good one. Don't argue with me about that, I'm right.

There are many kinds of writing and for some the skill is everything while for others the talent is the thing.

To write good business letters is a skill. Repetition and hard work can make NEARLY anyone proficient.

Technical writing requires more insight into the readers thought process and a skill with the subject matter. That can be learned but has a slight requirement for the talent.

Fiction, by contrast, is a means of entertainment and to do it well we must have both talent and skill.

I define talent in two parts. First an ability to feel what other people feel, to be a part of them. If you can't feel it, you can't describe it.

The second part of talent is the god given ability to put in print those feelings and make other people feel them.

In fiction, you can learn to write better, but you need both the ability to create a story and make other people feel it!

For me, the basics are not learnable, but without the work to make the skill equal to the talent, there is nothing.

In short, if you have the ability to feel and project, then you can learn to write. If you lack those insights, you have no chance no matter how hard you work.

I don't think it's so much being born a writer as it is developing at X age the twisted psychosis known as an imagination. People who develop this dangerous deviance will often have bizarre playing sessions of fantastic worlds not based on TV shows and whatnot. Contained early and treated with liberal doses of reality and mind-numbing TV and the child may be able to live a normal drone life. If however, it is not contained and said child begins to develop a fascination for the world of books, reading them on his own time for fun, then it might be too late. The child will be beginning the full transformation into an antisocial writer deviant. Watch out for tell tale signs such as stories not involving their favorite characters, creation of own world, personifying and developing a story with toys, and voracious reading.

Don't let writing happen to your child!

(A paid message from the Oceania Proles Society. Remember, if your kid grows up to be a writer, he might be like the guy who wrote this post and no one wants that.)

Boota said:

I don't think it's a matter of being born with a talent for it. I think it's a matter of being born with a drive for it. I have always been a creative person. I made a lot of my money in high school drawing things for people, and I have been a professional musician since I was sixteen. I never had even the slightest desire to be a writer, even though my aunt had been telling me since I was four years old that I was going to be one. My imagination was so well developed that I always pulled other people right into it with me, even adults.

One day when things weren't going so well for my band, I decided to try writing, since it was a project I could do without any outside help from anyone. In a band you're beholden to the other members to accomplish anything. I wrote a short story, just to see if I could do it, and it came out much better than I could have hoped. So, after two more warm-up stories, I dove into the novel.

I hadn't seen that aunt in fifteen years, as she has been divorced from my uncle, but I looked her up and took her one of the first copies of my novel when it came out. She recognized something in me even at that young age and she always tried to guide me toward it. I had to let her know she was right.

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What you described is "talent" in its basic form. Drive is what furthers the talent into tangible ends like music, a painted canvas or a story.

It can be looked at this way also: I absolutely loved the movie "A Beautiful Mind." My wife was a bit disturbed at the idea that I related to the complex jumbled up artistic nature of that man's talent for seeing complex mathimatical equasions or patterns in almost anything he looked. Yet, I have no drive whatsoever to pursue learning anything about that type of work. It was his talent for numbers and problem solving that his passion and drive forced him to pursue.

It's the same thing with your writing. One day, probably for a multitude of different reasons rather than just the bad day of practice, you were suddenly comfortable with taking another artistic step in a different direction than you had previously. That was talent screaming at you, and drive forcing you to puruse it.

I'd even be willing to bet that if you really thought about it, you didn't actually have a choice in the matter. You had to create something, and writing was another way to do that.

This is how I now that it's talent and nature, and nature provides the drive for the talent. I have to create my works or I simply don't feel like "a person." I've gone for long periods of time when I wasn't creating anything, and during those times I was depressed and didn't seem to care about much. Being back into has made me feel tremendously better on the inside and I don't have this feeling of restraint around my mind when I'm creating something new.

rgraham666 said:

It is, as always, both.

I believe that everybody is born with talents, some stronger than others.

Which talents we use depends on a wide spectrum of things.

Through use our talents become more pronounced and useful.

So I believe that all are born writers, some learn to be writers.

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rg is once again wise. Open the door in your head that you closed off so long ago! You have every talent, you just told yourself you couldn't do certain things. "I'm not musical." "I can't do maths." In the absence of physical reasons like deafness or head injury, this is crap. We are all born writers. Interest and practice will make us better.

Halo_n_horns said:

This is how I now that it's talent and nature, and nature provides the drive for the talent. I have to create my works or I simply don't feel like "a person." I've gone for long periods of time when I wasn't creating anything, and during those times I was depressed and didn't seem to care about much. Being back into has made me feel tremendously better on the inside and I don't have this feeling of restraint around my mind when I'm creating something new.

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I so agree with this. I spent several years not creaing anything, trying to be a "normal" person. Then i realized that I can't be that way. I have to write. A piece of me was missing when I didn't write. I was agitated and unhappy. Picking up the pen again, I am fulfilled. I feel like I have made myself whole again.

Except for Cant, with whom I agree and Zoot who seems to be in a state of constant amazement at the esteem in which he is held, it seems to me that most, if not all, the posters so far would deem themselves to have 'talent' as writers.

'Talent as writers' is, I'm afraid, bollocks.

"All men are created equal." (incuding women though in a less substantial way obviously) and this is almost perfectly true, if you take 'created' as the point of insemination. (barring gene malfunction) At the first split (ok maybe the millionth or ten billionth) is when men (and women to a lesser extent) become different from each other. But at that creation every single person has exactly the same potential

Every one of them could be Einstein or Hitler, Mozart or Manilow, Homer or Homer. Their direction (chosen or forced) is what separates them as they grow, womb-wise and worth-wise.

Some go towards sports (playing or knowing every score of every major league game since 1974) some towards science (inventing atom bombs or bicycles) and the rest of us are drawn home to words. (not an exhaustive list)

As for learning, someone once said something like "the only thing that is ever learnt is that there is more that we don't know."