Recently, a post on the /r/writing subreddit garnered much praise and discussion from the community. The post in question argued that writing was not a talent, but a skill, something that could be honed and perfected over time. It further posited that great authors were not individuals born with immense literary talent, but rather those who have spent thousands and thousands of hours refining their craft, resulting in the appearance of prodigiousness. Essentially, the standard motivational advice holds true:

hard work beats talent, especially when talent doesn't work hard.

Before we can discuss the merits of such a claim, it's important to understand why it's being made in the first place. After all, if someone were to ask me why I'm unable to qualify for the International Math Olympiad, or why I'm not a chess grandmaster, a lack of natural aptitude would be a perfectly reasonable response. We easily accept that in those fields, those who succeed, especially those who succeed at a very young age, are born with a level of innate ability that cannot be replicated, no matter the amount of effort they put in. Yet when we apply this logic to writing, it seems to be much less convincing. Why is this the case?

I believe this is likely due to the confusing nature of aptitude in writing. Writing, unlike math or chess, lacks an objective standard that makes it easy to differentiate skill. In fact, even among the arts, writing is unique in its subjectivity. Music, as well as the visual and performing arts, all have various exams and grades that serve to measure progress, as well as many technical aspects that allow a truly exceptional performer to demonstrate skill. While organizations such as The Alliance for Young Artists and Writers and the Youngarts Foundation do attempt to select the country's most exceptional writers (at least at a high school level), it is very difficult to argue that the winners of such competitions are truly the best ones, especially considering the organizers' bias towards certain morals and themes. There is also the strange lack of any literary child prodigies within recent history. Although the number of teenage chess grandmasters and piano virtuosos appear to be both innumerable and constantly increasing, there have only been two true child prodigies in the past 300 years of Western literature: Mary Shelly and Arthur Rimbaud.

Yet it's also undeniable that there are those who naturally excel at writing and those who do not. It's just that the difference between those who do and those who don't isn't something that can be easily explained. In chess, it's easy to see where me and Magnus Carlsen diverge: he can think twenty to thirty moves ahead, and I can barely think of two. In music it's similarly easy: Lang Lang could play La Campenella at age 10, while I, after 4 years of lessons, can barely squeak out the first few notes of Joe Hisaishi's Summer. In writing, on the other hand, it's much harder to figure out precisely how my poetry and, say, Rilke's differ. It's not hard to see that Rilke is an unfathomably better writer than me: that fact is exceedingly obvious. But it's difficult to precisely pinpoint exactly how my lines fail and his succeed. Any diagnosis we can make is abstract in nature: his stanzas contain more vitality, his verses more grace, he "sings the traces of fugitive gods."

It is because of this that the idea that writing isn't a talent is wrong. In fact, writing may be the cruelest arbiter of talent there is. With other fields, there is a direct line connecting the abilities of those who possess talent and those who do not. Although I may be hopeless at chess, I can at least pinpoint where I blunder and resolve to fix those mistakes in the future. It's clear exactly how Magnus Carlsen is better than me, and I can try my damnedest to achieve that level of skill, even though I most likely will be unable to. In writing, no such line exists. I don't know why Rilke or Eliot or Borges or Calvino are better than me, just that they are. I'm unable to fathom writing anything close to that level of quality, let alone the path that would allow me to do so. The subjectivity inherent in writing doesn't make it less of a talent, it exacerbates it. It's one of the reasons why it's so difficult to teach people how to write. It's easy to recognize what makes good writing good and bad writing bad, but it's excruciatingly difficult to transform bad writing into good writing or bad writers into good writers. Even Stephen King, the patron saint of contemporary popular fiction, echoes a similar message, writing in his memoir/writing advice book, On Writing:

"But before we go on, let me repeat my basic premise: if you’re a bad writer, no one can help you become a good one, or even a competent one. If you’re good and want to be great . . . fuhgeddaboudit."

That being said, while talent plays a major role in one’s skill, it’s pointless to worry about it. A fixation on it will only lead to frustration and despair. In fact, while I have spent the majority of this essay arguing for the existence and importance of literary talent, it can be argued in another sense that talent does not matter at all. Namely, in the fact that there’s nothing any of us can do to change or modify it. It simply is what it is. All we can strive for is to better ourselves and our abilities as much as we can, and write authentically and with passion. If we have done that, we have done enough.