Thursday, August 6, 2009

Is Writing a Gift?


I have a one word answer for that question. No way. (See? Writing is tricky.)

It takes hard work and commitment to become a concert pianist, or a professional athlete, or a successful trial lawyer—or a writer. There must be determination to learn and grow, and then learn some more.

A person may have a natural inclination for persuasive argument, or to toss a football, but having a natural inclination does not equate to having a gift.

If there is a gift associated with writing (or any of those other things), it's called Desire. The desire to want to accomplish something. To improve. To get better and better and better until someday, someone might even think you're the "best."

I want to learn how to weave a story with such amazing skill that readers forget they're looking at words on a page. I want the words to surround them, flow over them, become so much a part of them that their lives are transported to the world I've created.

I want my writing to be a gift to them.


CR: Fear the Worst by Linwood Barclay.

It's all better with friends.

3 comments:

  1. Amen, sista! While I don't necessarily agree that writing isn't a gift, I do want my writing to be a gift to my readers. :) How's those revisions coming along?

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  2. Some days are good, some days not so much.

    I shouldn't make plans to work. I should just work.

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  3. I think it probably starts with a gift, or maybe a passionate inclination--but I do think talent is involved--and there you have one fifth of one percent of THIS ball game. Very exact, I know; I've actually computed this. The other remaining, um, percentage--OK, I haven't really computed it--is sheer dogged determination and refusal to take no for an answer. A gift for readers is a goal I shall aspire to as well.

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