Hm... If I hear someone play violin really great, I also say, 'wow, you're so talented' - but that doesn't mean I'm not aware it takes long years of playing to get great (in fact, having a neighbour who tries to learn playing violin for fifteen years now, I have very good idea).
Now, even if I decided 'I want to play like this' and my Wish-O-Matic Genie would made me play violin for hours every day, and study everything there is about the playing violin, it still wouldn't help. 8, 18 or 118 years of practice - the result would be the same - an accoustic weapon. Because the sad truth is, I don't have the ear for harmony and I don't feel musical rhythm.
So no, hard work is not enough. You need
talent.
I wished someone finally explained it to my neighbour.
In writing, talent is the ability to bring something new, fresh - be it idea, style, different take on some matter, language - or in other words, the ability to perceive the world differently and to mediate it to the readers. And that is something that can't be learnt. One can improve his skills, you can study all there is about how to create plot and write strong dialouges and avoid adjectives, but without talent, it's still nothing. Yes, he can even get published.
And then people will buy a cheap paperback, read it in a plane, then toss it in the nearest bin together with paper coca-cola cup, and forget it within two days. It will collect dust in libraries, once in ten years read by someone with too much free time, or a fanatic trying to discover an overlooked talent.
It's sad and unfair and depressing, but it's reality.
That doen't mean that people should stop writing and trying to improve, only that they should be realistic in their expectation and the know the truth about their writing and
why they write. Because if they write for fun, or if they write because they have some ambitions to become known as
writers - published, sold and read - those are two very different things.
In fact, fanfiction could be perfect for it - because it's more necessary to find out something 'new' and not just parrot what is in the original work already.
And this rant doesn't mean I think of myself as the greatest author of all,
no, I don't. Actually I suffer of severe minority complex, and am one of those who is very hard critic of their own work, as my beta and other victims of my endless whining and doubts could confirm.
I'm told I show some talent in my original fiction, but I know it will require years of hard work to be really good. And I do work hard. But only
because I see some point in doing so. I don't try to learn to play violine, because I know it would be just a waste of time.
Fanfiction is another thing, it's for fun and to improve writing in English, and because Zevran in my head just doesn't want to shut up.
Retour en haut
(I'd have expected to get 100 in the end, at best)
It is not that I have won the pulitzer price (sp?) but it still damn awesome that people still reading my long winded drivel, even after over 1 1/2 years. Wow.
