Wow! Quite the response to the hypothetical question about whether you would want to know if there is publication in your future and whether that would stop you from writing — 186 comments and counting. One lesson I learned from that post: never play poker with an author, because they will cheat!! The number of people who fudged on the hypothetical was off the charts. I’ll be charitable and chalk that one up to creativity and natural rulebreaking disposition I guess.
I wanted to call your attention to a recent comment by vaqqb, because I think it makes for an interesting point of discussion.
vaqqb writes:
You know, Nathan, this is a more relevant question that it looks, because so much irrational author behavior springs from it. Agonizing over rejection-letter comments, begging for any kind of personalized rejection, putting things through one crit group after another, going into pitch sessions with half-finished novels–all of that because we want someone to tell us straight-up, yes or no, are we any good? Are we ever going to be any good?
Look how many people would stop writing if they couldn’t sell it; or better, look how many people would change the way they spent their time, efforts and presumably money if they knew they couldn’t sell what they wrote.
From our perspective any agent COULD be our seer, with better accuracy than our unpublished crit partners, longsuffering spouses, or moms. Instead they send us fortune-cookie platitudes in a form letter. Where’s our Delphi? Where’s our Simon Cowell? What do we have to do to get an honest “no”?
So why don’t I give people the Simon Cowell treatment and tell people when they are the literary equivalent of Spencer Pratt’s soul?
Before I answer that, let me reluctantly admit that at times it is tempting. When you’ve read twenty queries in a row by people who will almost positively never be published, sometimes this voice in the back of the head wants to tell people to just stop and go and spend some time with their family. And for about 50% of the queries I receive, I think I could probably tell someone with 99% accuracy that they don’t have the chops for mainstream publication.
But I don’t give into that temptation. And here’s why:
#1: It’s just not my place. Who am I to tell someone they shouldn’t follow their dreams? I’m just trying to do my job, which is sell books.
#2: The people who have the least chance tend to be the people who are most hostile to hearing that.
#3: Who knows, anyway?
That last point is somewhat complex, because it’s my job to assess talent and abilities and good from bad, and in my own defense I would say that given that I spend hours every day assessing whether something is good or bad, just as with anything else, I’ve gotten very in tune with quickly and accurately assessing whether something is good. But at the end of the day, I’m just a guy with my own subjective opinions, and someone else might find merit in books that I don’t get. That’s why I specifically say in my queries that someone else may feel differently.
This all comes down to one basic fact about books: there is no Delphi. There are some people who rise above the cacophony of opinions and become bestsellers and award winners, but even those people will have a huge number of detractors. And there are others who most people don’t think are good, but there will be some people who read their work and find meaning and value in it.
Yes, I could tell the truth to people who I think really don’t have a shot, but trust me, they they don’t want to hear it from me. And I’m not the person to tell them.
The blogs of the world are probably the largest single chunk of publicly-available evidence that lots of writing and frequent writing doesn’t always translate into compelling writing. There are some people who could write their shopping list on their blogs, and I’d read it. Others write and write and with all the goodwill in the world (which you don’t have to have, with blogs, you just choose to read ’em or not) while I may admire their voluminous enthusiasm – their writing isn’t compelling. And I wander off that page and probably never return.
But if they’re having fun with their blog, well that’s grand. But practice alone doesn’t create an engaging, sellable book.
“Yes, I could tell the truth to people who I think really don’t have a shot, but trust me, they they don’t want to hear it from me. And I’m not the person to tell them.”
By the time a person starts querying an agent, they should have done all they can do to get their work “publishable.” At that point, I think it’s perfectly understandable for a person, especially an agent, to have and give an experienced opinion.
Nathan choosing not to do so exhibits a certain amount of class and professionalism.
The people who most need to hear an honest opinion of their work are most often the ones who won’t listen. That’s why I’m very careful about who I critique now. Some really don’t want to improve, they want you to tell them they are wonderful. I simply don’t have time to stroke egos.
The thing is, it’s hard to know (especially at the beginning) whether you have no talent or you’re a diamond in the rough.
Vaqqb is right, authors are looking for a sign, any sign, that they aren’t crazy lunatics for spending hours, weeks, months, and years working on their novel.
And I respect your position on not telling someone to please back away from the keyboard. Maybe not everyone is ready for publishing, but there is some joy (I think) in just writing.
Not everyone who can write well gets published, or even tries, for that matter.
But EVERYONE who’s been published has been read by someone, somewhere, at some stage of the game who thought, “This is unreadable dreck.”
If the recruit then waits at the door for three days without food, water, or encouragement, he is then allowed to come in and begin training.
Huh. I thought Nathan’s post was pretty straightforward, hence my earlier plain-old-thanks comment…
A lot (not all) of the comments he’s gotten seem to be in the “Them’s fightin’ words, Mister — put up your dukes!” vein. And it may be that those of us who’ve taken offense need to stop and take a breath and remember what’s going on here.
Which is, as I see it: Nobody who spends much time reading this blog can seriously doubt that Nathan LOVES reading and LOVES good writing. But one thing makes him different from (most of) the rest of us: he’s in the business of SELLING good writing, too.
So when he said, “I think I could probably tell someone with 99% accuracy that they don’t have the chops for mainstream publication,” I have a hard time believing he meant to discount improvement over time, the virtues of perspiration and good luck, and so on. We need to put ourselves in his shoes — he simply can’t afford to acquire everything, no matter how rough-hewn, in the vague hope that it will really take off 10 (or even two) years down the road. Not to put words into his mouth, but I think he’s really saying he can afford to GAMBLE on only that 1%.
Somebody mentioned William Blake, how long it took for him to be appreciated (posthumously at that), and so on. Yeah. And if Blake had queried Nathan, Nathan might have passed on him for any number of reasons. He SAID 99% certainty, not 100% certainty.
And anyhow, betcha anything he gets just as frustrated at writers who won’t query him because he’s just starting out and, hence, believe they don’t have time to wait around for him to build his list. Do those writers have 100% certainty that’s not a mistake? Sure they don’t. But they’ve got to play the odds, as they see it.
It’s art, yes. It’s entertainment, yes. But once we attempt to move a manuscript into the marketplace, we need to appreciate that it’s a business transaction — and a bet — from both directions.
[Apologies for the long-winded follow-up. I thought this was going to be the short version. :)]
When did “mainstream” become a good word? Mainstream is safe. If agents and publishers are only looking for mainstream fiction, then fiction is dying. Part of the definition of mainstream is that it’s not exceptional. Exceptional means brilliant, different, outside the ordinary. Exceptional art, in any medium, is what keeps the art alive. It invigorates it, takes it new places. Mainstream is stagnant. To an agent or publisher, mainstream is reliable. But don’t be fooled by that. It’s reliable now, but not in the long run.
Any art that closes its doors to the new and different is in the process of dying. Instead of more books with glitzy covers and little substance, fiction needs its Salon des Refuses. It needs more publishers taking chances on books that stand outside the norm, in order to invigorate the art. But publishers are businesspeople, and they look for the reliable sale. It’s hard to argue with that; businesses need to make money. In other words, mainstream fiction is good for business– right now. But it’s not good for the art of fiction as a whole. If agents and publishers wanted to invest in the future of this art, they would not be looking for mainstream fiction ONLY. They would leave room for the exceptional. Doing so might not bring in fast cash, but it means investing in the future. Today’s exceptional literature is tomorrow’s mainstream literature. But we won’t have that mainstream literature of tomorrow if we don’t have the exceptional of today.
Unfortunately, I think the Salon des Refuses is happening in self-publishing, along with a lot of plain old refuse. If major publishers don’t make room for the new and the different, they’re not going to survive down the road.
Please, think outside the mainstream, Nathan.
I believe that people who’d give up writing altogether just because they are told they don’t have viable commercial success should realize that that, itself, is at least one of the reasons they will not succeed. I realize there’s a bit of post hoc ergo propter hoc going on in this statement, but really: if you love writing, you’re going to write even if you’re the only one who ever reads it. You write for yourself, for fun, for any other reason other than to make money. It’s like playing a musical instrument — you don’t practice and play only if you’re assured a spot in a concert. If you did, you’d never get offered a place in any concert.
Of course, if Delphi told me I didn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell getting published, I would cut back the time and energy I spend working on original projects and maybe write fanfic or something. But I don’t think I would ever stop altogether. I would hate to lose one of the rare things I actually love doing.
I always wonder why people don’t listen to the criticism they get on reality shows. People usually give a testimonial to the camera and say, “I don’t care what they say. I got talent and I’m gonna do what I’m gonna do. No one can stop me.”
And they are right, no one can stop them. But for me, I’d like a little honest feedback. And I have just recently learned how to listen. It really helps to improve your craft, whatever that may be.
jes-
Thanks, that sums things up very well.
MH-
Publishers and agents follow the marketplace. If you want to see experimental fiction, buy experimental fiction and encourage other people to buy experimental fiction. But it’s hard enough to make a living as an agent aiming for “mainstream,” let alone shopping around things that aren’t going to sell, first to editors, and then, should I find someone to take a chance, to the general public.
I think people may have a bit of an overinflated notion that agents and editors drive the marketplace — to a certain extent, perhaps. But look at THE SHACK. Zero marketing to #1 bestseller. People will find what they want to read. Agents and editors spend a lot more time reacting to the marketplace than driving it.
I would ask a question of you — how many experimental novels and other works outside of the mainstream have you read lately? Because they are most definitely being published. Maybe not with an agent and outside “mainstream” publication, but they’re definitely out there.
No, I’m not published, but I’ve had some positive feedback from agents – but what does that mean? I’m waiting to hear back on a partial and if it’s a no, then I’m considering officially hanging up the ol’ pen & paper.
Ah, icqb, don’t hang it up. I’ve been where you are (and it’s frustrating), but obviously your writing is solid or they wouldn’t bother. Trust me, editors and agents are far too busy to waste time on poor writing. It could be the time is not right for your story. It could be a personal opinion: they just can’t get super-excited about your particular story and feel they wouldn’t do it justice in the marketplace. As an editor, I know what it is to work with stories that I can’t wait to show the world. Just “settling” for a great story that does not speak to me personally does not begin to compare.
Also, please keep in mind that it takes years to perfect a craft or profession. You wouldn’t just decide to be an engineer and then start…er, engineering. No, you have to learn, you have to go to school, do internships (sometimes for free), study your industry, and then find a job (no small trick for most of us.) Writing is the same way. For my husband’s first job out of college, he sent out over 250 resumes and ended up in a wonderful job after a lot of heartache and rejection. My point? He kept at it.
Keep at it, any and all of you who are querying. There are a million great writers out there whose stories will languish on their harddrives because they won’t put their work out there, or they quit after a couple of rejections. The writers who succeed are the ones who perservere. And I don’t mean perservering on their first book or even their fifth, but maybe their tenth. Sometimes it takes years to find your dream job; sometimes it takes years to find your dream agent.
it is so subjective, tho. that’s what makes it even more difficult for the author querying to gauge whether their book is good. i’ve had probably at least 80 agents tell me no (does this mean i have no talent?) via form R or non-repsonse.
i’ve also had at least three say, great writing, but i could never sell this in the current market.
i had 6 editors pass and 3 say, YES, this is what we want to buy.
all on the same manuscript.
so yes, talent matters, good writing matters. but the subjectivity of it makes things that much more convoluted for the writer.
there’s so many of us who write good novels. we just can’t tell if it’s good ENOUGH to sell until we begin querying for agents and subbing to editors. and good ENOUGH depends quite a lot on personal taste.
again, good luck to everyone who is trying!!
When I look back at some of the things I wrote and editors published over ten years ago, I’m amazed at how much I’ve improved. I wasn’t awful (I guess…hope), but I was only in my twenties and thought I knew it all back then. I had no idea how much there was to learn, and how hard I’d have to work to constantly improve my skills. But I did.
This isn’t the case for everyone, and unfortunately the people with no innate talent at all will be the first ones to agrue the point that time and practice makes you a better writer, but I did want to comment so the people who do have the innate talent won’t give up.
I’ve seen writers who I thought were abominable. But they persevered and worked at their craft. I’ve been amazed at some of the remarkable improvements they made. I would be the last to dismiss a writer’s chances of ever being published based on one manuscript. Of course there are those who will never rise above incompetence. But I’m not seer enough to determine the wheat from the chaff. One day a particular writer’s work may be chaff. On another he/she has created wheat. And I’m not talking grain here.
I know this amazing kid who made up the greatest stories. She went on to become the most avid book reader I have ever even heard of (repeat reader, intelligent and insightful dissector of each of her beloved books, including ones she can suggest the most awesome improvements on, due to her innate understanding of story.)
And yet, she never was a good student, is a lazy writer (uses 4 for for, etc.), misspells all her words and doesn’t use spell-check to correct herself…
BUT: one day she could be such a writer, if she chose to work a little, because she has such an innate sense of story and such an imagination.
—
On the other hand, sometimes one who can’t create great becomes a great champion of those who can and do.
You know what I LOVE most about Nathan’s blog? His readers’ comments. I find myself coming back to peruse everyone’s opinions, input, etc., again and again.
You guys ROCK:-) And of course, you too Nathan.
So interesting…
I have four manuscripts in a bottom drawer and 70+ rejection letters.
I’m that 1%.
And my debut novel was published when I turned 54.
If someone had told me this was going to happen I would never have believed them.
The thing is I never stopped wanting to write stories. I can’t explain it. I’m that kid who sees the 10 ft high pile of horse manure and says, “There’s gotta be a pony in there somewhere…”
Patricia-
I’m guessing that, like just about every other published author, the manuscripts in the drawer may make you shudder and may not have attracted an agent, but they were probably good, but not quite good enough. I probably would have felt that they “just weren’t there yet.” So by no means would your earlier efforts probably make that 50%.
Just a guess based on the unpublished manuscripts of people who went on to be publication. It’s not that there’s a massive drastic improvement, just steady improvement from “good but not quite there” to amazing.
Also, there have been a few who have ventured into prognostication about the chances of an author being published, only to be proven hillariously wrong.
No one wants to be famous for telling the next J.K. Rowling to give it up.
I definetly understand what you mean Nathan. In a perfect world anyone can do anything they want and make a bucket load of money doing it. As far as you may like a book, or an actor may be liked at an audition, there are other things at work which also have an influence on selection. This isn’t the ‘natural selection’ that we learned about in high school, this is a buisness. And the truth is a buisness needs to do what it has to do to continue to bring in the money (the green stuff – or red, green, blue etc in Canada) which keeps it afloat. Look at where I work (in retail). The store I work for is owned by a MAJOR Canadian company, and the company sold the franchise I work in. They decided they’d make more money selling it (and the folks who bought it decided they’d make more money rebuilding it into something which will make people want to shop there more then ever before. I think people are feeling paniked and threatened by the reality of the situation. But you’re an agent. This blog is about giving us useful information. It can’t be all roses and daisies. I like the truth.
That’s a good answer. I’m sure many people really don’t want to hear the truth. I do. I wish there was a way I could really know whether or not my writing sucked. If I found out that my writing is not good enough, I’d know there were major changes I needed to make in the way I write.
I’m not sure if I made this clear earlier or not, but I think it is really important to write and enjoy it instead of writing for publication. There are artists everywhere who aren’t famous or making tons of money, but they love what they do. Many of them do it in there spare time and just enjoy being creative while doing something they love and trying to perfect their craft.
When I began writing my first novel, I was obsessed with trying to be published, and it took away the creative spark and fun of the experience. Stephenie Meyer always says to write for yourself and to create stories you love. When doing that, it’s easier to focus on the characters, the process, and the world you have created rather than what an agent is going to say way down the road.
For me, I’ve decided that I do want to be published, but that isn’t the main focus. I hope to be like Orion and get published when the timing is right and when my writing is at its best. There is a time and place for everything, and I’m going to keep working until I get it right. In the meantime, I’m going to listen to the comments from agents and fellow writers and try to learn and keep getting better.
I don’t think anybody cheated, they just changed the conditions of the game.
I have two experimental novels in a drawer. I have not tried sending them out at this point.
I have a really fun yarn going in the third novel that I am working on. I can’t wait to send it out.
Maybe someday the experimental pieces will come out of the drawer. Maybe not. I am still glad I wrote them.
It feels so different, though, writing something that (and I am NOT talking dimmed down, just more mainstream) I feel is more easy to connect to the world with.
I confess I love art, originality, unique voice.
But I also love being able to pay the bills, own a house, go out to dinner, take a vacation, participate in the world.
Somewhere between high art and low brow lies the mainstream. Probably all of them are needed.
I adore the agents and publishers of high original work. I cherish them. I also appreciate and don’t blame the publishers trying to sell a product that’s still good, but more marketable.
And the low brow? Well, where would we be, partner, without those cowboy novels?
I think it’s a bit more complicated. Let’s imagine that I have a talent comparable to that of Jane Austen or Herman Melville. I write a book. I’d like to have time to write more, so it would be nice to have money from the one I’ve written. But a while back someone submitted Pride and Prejudice, thinly disguised, to various publishers, and only one rejected it as an obvious plagiarism. After the fact, the consensus in the industry was, Jane Austen’s books are popular because they have been established as classics; they could not be sold as new books because they don’t fit modern taste. An agent the other day said she would not bother to submit Moby Dick to publishers if sent in, because she thought it was not suitable for modern taste.
So the thing is, I might write my book and show it to friends who like, as it might be, Austen or Melville, and they might think it was brilliant, and it might actually (against all the odds) be in the same class as a book by Austen or Melville. But that still wouldn’t tell me whether it was publishable. If agents who knew the industry thought it was not publishable, it might still make sense to go on writing. I might think: we only have a handful of books by Austen, but I LOVE Austen, I’d like to have more, I’ll write them myself. I might think: Why aren’t there more books like Moby Dick? I LOVE Moby Dick. I go into Barnes and Noble and the only book like Moby Dick is Moby Dick. I have NOTHING TO READ except Moby Dick. I know! I’ll write the books myself. Ha HA! But I would presumably spend a lot less time on submissions.
I write because I love to write, but if I didn’t also want to be published, I wouldn’t be here, would I.
Fiction is a unique art form in that, unlike music or painting or scuplture, what I write is not the finished product. If scuplture were like writing, you wouldn’t actually sculpt, you would just draw what the scuplture will eventually look like. The printed page is the final form of the art.
Neither can fiction writers truly perform their art, or take a copy of their novel and hang it up in a bar for people to read. Well, actually, you can do that, with the internet, but it isn’t the same as being published by a publisher.
To my mind, writing is only half the point of this exercise. The other half is to be read. If I’m not being read, my motivation to write isn’t as great. I still write because the creative urge never goes away, but I find other ways to express and share it. That’s why I write it down – to share it with others.
Snork… Spencer Pratt. Oh how I love dumb “reality” TV.
I read everyone’s comments, and I have to admit, I’m a little disappointed. I really hope that most people write to write, because they love it. Because if you don’t love it, you shouldn’t be doing it. You’re influencing people’s lives. I just left teaching to pursue a career as a writer and I feel that the two paths are very similar. There are a lot of teachers who teach because it’s what they’ve been doing or because they’re looking forward to a good retirement package. There are teachers who teach just because they want the same schedule as their kids, or they like the summers off. Most of the people who teach for those reasons are terrible teachers. You have to love teaching to be a good teacher and you have to love writing to be a good writer. If you aren’t doing it because you love it, if you wouldn’t be doing it even if you never in a million years get published or paid, if you aren’t doing it because it makes your heart sing… then you shouldn’t be doing it at all. Life is far too short.
I like to think of myself as a “talented” writer. I have some natural talent, and I’ve worked hard at honing my craft. I’d like to think that I’ll be published someday. I’d like to think that I’ll be sitting on Oprah’s set in a year with her raving about her newest book club selection, my book. But you know what… if that never happened, I’d still write. And I think that’s what makes the best writers of all, that passion.
This reminds me a talk I heard from an author who was shopping around a story with an evil clown in it. The first editor hated it; it was too much like Stephen King’s It. The second editor loved it; it was just like Stephen King’s It!
Nobody does know and I find that hopeful. Ray Bradbury claims to have received 3,000 rejections. Dune by Frank Herbert was rejected over 20 times before it sold and now it’s an SF classic. On and on. I believe as long as I’m open to learning as much about my craft as possible at some point the magic will happen for me. I believe I can always make it better, if not this story then the next one. And the next.
So, I’m a published author (major house) and here’s how I see it:
1. Nathan is dead on the money on all his comments.
2. People in this string who are frustrated by that, and who want to be *published* writers, need to get some thick skin, focus on the work, their dreams and just keep going. Or, give up on it and do something else. Or, you can be satisifed by loving what you’re doing and don’t worry about getting published. Harsh maybe, but if you don’t have the chops to *persevere* in this “business” then you’re already toast.
3. I read somewhere that only 2% of people who submit *fiction* ms’s in any given year ever get published. That didn’t discourage me – it just made me dig my heels in and get busy; but then, I’m stubborn.
4. I vehemently disagree with anon 2:51. Any art *is* a gift, a talent – whatever you want to call it. If a person doesn’t have a particular gift or talent, they can take lessons and they can learn to be better at that art than they were, but can *never* get to the level of someone who has the talent. The talent isn’t just the inate ability – it’s the drive, the dreaming, the desire and the vision to see what something can be. That can’t be taught.
5. Writing is art. Getting published IS NOT validation that your art is good. THERE IS NO SUCH THING. I love Van Gogh, but you may not. That DOES NOT mean that Van Gogh is no good. It just means I love him and you don’t.
6. Robert Crais says that a book is an incomplete work of art until someone reads it. He says reading it completes the work. He doesn’t say it’s an incomplete work of art until someone *likes* it. I happen to agree with Crais’s philosophy. So, if/when you get published and someone reads your stuff (or even if you don’t get published and someone reads your stuff), the work is complete – doesn’t matter if they liked it or not – doesn’t matter if you sold 1 copy or 100,000. Doesn’t even matter if it was just your mother who read it. I think it’s about sharing dreams and art. No one’s work is loved by everyone.
7. Don’t look for validation in whether or not someone likes your work. Love the work for what it is.
8. The work should be giving you all the *juice* you need. If you’re not getting some major charge out of just crafting stories, then *please* stop.
9. Dare to dream and don’t give up, because that’s all this is really about. If you’re afraid to even dream all the way, then stop writing now, because your heart isn’t in it and you’re wasting your own time.
10. Finally, I worked on seriously pursuing a writing career 15 years before I finally got an agent, 16 years before I got a publishing deal. I wasn’t submitting to agents all that time – I was honing my art and craft. I only submitted work for about 8 years before – and not steadily submitting – going back and writing new stuff and then trying again (and again). Like I said, you gotta have “chops” to stick it out in this “business”.
This is about love. It’s all about love of the art, love of the craft, love of a life spent writing, and sharing stories. Even if you never get published, you can still have that love and keep writing (and you should).
J.F.
P.S. Paint by numbers isn’t painting. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do paint by numbers, it just means it’s not painting. 🙂
Anon who wrote:
“If I found out that my writing is not good enough, I’d know there were major changes I needed to make in the way I write.”
I don’t think you can do that. I think our writing is an expression of who we are. I have a friend who writes prolifically but his writing is not perfect. I don’t think he can change it though and every time I read something he’s written, I am hearing who he is. I wouldn’t want his writing to change.
Unless you mean about polishing and grammar and things. Those you could change. But if someone really told you that, where would you even begin? And doesn’t that suck all the fun out of writing if you have to change the way you write to conform?
Getting to the NBA is a false analogy here.
Getting to a professional level in sports requires certain innate abilities. There is no “talent” for playing basketball, per se, but you can’t play at a high level unless you have the right physical attributes. You also have to start young — your body has a best before date.
The only innate attribute I can think of that affects writing is intelligence. Can anyone name one other innate trait that creates writing talent?
Grammar ain’t it. That’s a learned skill. Vocabulary, similarly, is learned.
Writing is entirely learned — unlike jumping or throwing a ball, nothing about it is natural.
Granted, from time to time you will see writing so bad that you just can’t believe the author will ever learn to write. But this isn’t because they lack “talent”; it’s because they’ve wasted their lives reading crap, because they take writing for granted, because they’re not serious enough to know how bad they are.
Okay, maybe this is a lack of “talent.” But that’s just a polite way of saying that these people are unintelligent, which in turn is a polite way of saying that they’re dumb as stumps. These people should give up.
The last thing we need is more Simon Cowells. Cowell is not a seer; he’s an egomaniacal dunce. Bob Dylan would never have got past Cowell, for example. Sure, some people feel Dylan can’t sing, but you can’t argue that he hasn’t been successful at what he does.
Nathan, Richard Ford is dyslexic. That’s as clear a sign of lack of writing “talent” as any — he’s got an innate disability that affects his ability to form words.
I’ll bet you’d like to represent him, though. 🙂
andrew-
I really disagree, first, on the NBA thing. There are players who have all the physical gifts in the world, but then there are players like LeBron James and Jason Kidd who have an innate feel for the game that goes way beyond just being tall and jumping high. Being a high level basketball player is part physical part mental.
And I also think the analogy fits with writing — “Storytelling” is a talent. It’s innate. Trust me, I’ve seen natural storytellers who have zero teaching and who are far better than people who have spent years practicing and who have MFAs and who have spent so much time honing their craft. Some people just have a tremendous natural gift that trumps practice.
I also feel that writing something that really flows and captures someone’s imagination (like Malcolm Gladwell, for instance, on the nonfiction side) is also a gift. No one can practice their way to becoming Malcolm Gladwell. It’s an innate gift that he has honed just as any NBA player who started with the physical gifts and then practiced their entire lives.
Writing well is an incredibly complex trait that involves perception, empathy, knowledge.. it’s so hard to put your finger on. But good storytellers just know what makes a good story. It’s not something you just learn, even if practice is an important part of it.
Nathan, I’d say those “natural storytellers” are people who have read well, have come from backgrounds where stories are told, and have always played with stories, whether orally or in writing — in other words, that there are more ways to learn than through formal education.
Writing is a complex skill, and as a result it’s hard to identify what makes some people apparent naturals. So we create a black box and call it “talent,” which removes the complexity.
Anyway, this is beside the point. We don’t really mean the same thing by “talent.” I will grant you that some people are unlikely ever to become good writers. Whether we call that a lack of talent or a hopeless and multifaceted skill deficit is moot.
Hi, Just wanted to mention that a friend of mine with SIX unpublished novels of women’s fiction just sold her latest at auction to a big-name publisher via a very well-known agent. I think it’s the kind of novel that you would have rejected, Nathan. Not that there’s anything wrong with that–your taste is your taste–but you would have rejected her other work, too. There has been a vast improvement in her writing over the years. The book comes out next year. Should she have quit? Should she have read the tea-leaves as “give it up, you’ll never get published?”
I thought so a few times, but I’m glad she didn’t.
So how can you call that? Also, many editors did turn the novel down. It was a small auction (two editors really going at it/and then one who made a single offer).
Go figure.
This all could be taken one step further, by asking if some people have no innate talent and will never get published no matter how hard they work to perfect their skills, then why do we see so many crash and burn novels being published these days? The crash and burn books are the ones where agent, editor and publisher thought they could pull it off, but didn’t.
If innate talent were a standard fixture in publishing, we’d all be reading wonderful books, the heavens would open up and glorious angels would start singing.
The Ear Thing
Re: “I’d say those “natural storytellers” are people who have read well, have come from backgrounds where stories are told, and have always played with stories, whether orally or in writing”
Have you ever seen LeBron James play basketball?
There is a character in the movie “Grand Canyon” (great movie by the way), who had played with some big-name basketball player when he was young. The character says: “He and I weren’t playing the same game.” There was “something there” that the average NBA player doesn’t have. It’s just not “skill.” Or “skill deficit.”
I mean, do you define imagination as a “skill?” Do people “learn” to be “imaginative?”
One of the most amazing things to me in getting my MFA in “creative writing,” was how UN-creative the average MFA student was (and professor, if I may be so bold).
I taught one day in grad school, as a guest teacher in someone else’s classroom. The students were told to come up with questions for me. One question was about meter, learning meter and all those technical aspects of writing poetry, and I answered: “I don’t pay any attention to that.”
And later the teacher who’d invited me to teach told me she felt like “jumping out of the window” when I said that, because she’d been holding me up to her class as an example of all the fantastic poetry you can write when you LEARN METER. She just assumed if I wrote the way I did, I MUST be studying very carefully my dithyrambs etc!
You don’t need to LEARN it, or study it. Just use your “ear.” That is, your innate natural talent. How do you develop “your ear?” You read and write.
I think this is true of fiction also. At least, I had a teacher who couldn’t understand why I wasted my time writing poetry, when I was so “gifted” writing fiction. It’s the “ear thing.”
A separate issue from actually getting published, but I have to say something in defense of the “ear thing.”
I agree with the ‘ear thing.’
I think it’s true of grammar, too. Undoubtedly, grammar can improve through study, but I think a writer should absorb a lot of rules through reading a lot.
The ‘ear thing’ equates to music nicely. There are people who play by ear. Not necessarily even perfect pitch, but an affinity for the sounds that translates into their fingers. Are they musicians? Of course. Are they educated musicians? No. Can they explain to anyone how they do what they do? Probably not in a way that is transferable.
Now lets talk about driving. People can get behind the wheel of a car with little formal instruction and push the pedals and react to the environment. But does that make them the kind of driver you want on the road? No. But even experienced drivers, those with training plus driving experience [practice] drive ‘by ear’. They get muscle and perceptive memory. If we had to think about driving at the level of a learner driver, there would be LOTS more accidents. We move to a level of ‘expertise’ where ‘natural’, dare I say a perception of ‘talent’, is exercised.
Writing as expressed by Wanda is somewhat like that. As we gain more and more awareness and practice, that is using those concepts in new ways, we add them to our ‘natural’ behaviour and even find it hard NOT to do them any more. That is called learning. In writing, it may be called ‘voice’. I’m not sure.
Talk to any ‘overnight success’ and you will find out how long that ‘night’ really was.
I think talent really is the factor that divides the great from the mediocre. Mozart had prodigious natural talent honed by years of ruthless practice. He could do things normal people, even great musicians with years of training and practice, simply couldn’t do.
I actually met a guy like this when I was a teen. He had never had a music lesson in his life, but he could listen to a piece of music one time and then play it back perfectly. He was also able to pick up an unfamiliar instrument and just play it. I actually saw him do this with a violin – an instrument he had never touched before. The parents of another friend of mine were antique collectors and they had picked up a violin somewhere. This guy walks over, picks it up and starts playing. He had a natural talent that was frightful to behold. But it wasn’t just parroting what he heard. He could riff and improvise and completely blow you away.
I often wonder what happened to him. He never became a famous guitar player, though at the age of 16, he was clearly on his way to being one of the greats.
I’ve also known wonderful storytellers who were functionally illiterate. Storytelling is an art. Writing is the craft of bringing stories to the printed page, because a well-told tale often doesn’t translate well to the page. Writing can be learned. Storytelling cannot. At best, you can learn to fake it and become a technically proficient but mediocre writer.
To my mind, a story isn’t truly finished until it’s published.
The driver analogy is a good one, but take it a step further. An experienced driver may seem talented, but put him or her in a race with race car drivers at the NASCAR or Indy or Formula One level and you’ll see that there is also a talent for driving. And within the professional level, there are levels of talent. In fact, at the very highest level, it is often talent that is the only difference.
“What I find interesting is how many people think the only reason to write is to be published, and that publication legitimizes ones efforts somehow. Is there any other endeavor that carries such a load of assumptions?”
It’s not a matter of validation. I know I can write. It’s a matter of the process being so out of my control (you can’t have it both ways — you can’t tell us that it’s in our control because if we write a good enough book we’ll get published, and then in the next breath tell us it’s all the marketplace and luck and expect us to believe only the first part, sorry).
If there was another way to quit practicing in front of the mirror, which is what writing for “the joy of it” (aka for myself and a few friends) is to me, I would jump at it with both feet. AAMOF, I would prefer another way if there was one.
No, putting it up on a website or having it printed and bound at Lulu.com is not going to do the job. Neither is just getting it onto Amazon. What’s needed is the distribution, not the physical product.
If there was another way to get the distribution, then we’d be getting somewhere.
But that doesn’t seem to exist.
I am in the business of medicine. It’s a tough field. The vast majority of people who set out to go to med school never get in. Highly competitive.
But there’s talent in medicine as well as learning.
I had the misfortune to have worked with a doctor who had the highest scores on the medical boards EVAH. In the history of the boards. Perfect scores all three times.
But the guy couldn’t diagnose his way out of a paper bag. He couldn’t spot impending demise. He diagnosed a three-day-old with “viral syndrome.” Well, yeah, herpes encephalitis is a virus. I saw the baby two hours after he did and Flight for Life was on their way.
I passed my boards, did upper echelon kind of scores. But what I have that genius doctor lacked is gut intelligence.
I can’t tell you how many times I have looked at a patient across the room, and thought, “Oh, bad language, bad language, they’re dying.” No idea what was wrong, just bad mojo, impending demise.
Follow the steps, baby with encephalitis, massive heart attack, germs rampaging through the blood stream.
I’m not perfect, medicine is an art not science, but if I had to trade my gut smarts for a perfect score on the boards, I wouldn’t do it. Gut smarts can’t be taught. (I don’t think.) It’s innate.
Same with writers. If your grammar sucks, you could take classes. Heck, if I wanted to, I could probably learn grammar, punctuation, etc.
But to be a storyteller, to catch the imagination of people other than yourself, is innate, and in my opinion un-learnable.
Anonymous, you just told a really great story. I’d like to read a medical thriller by you.
These posts have all been fascinating, but the wealth of thought is leaving me a little dizzy. I’m afraid to overthink my career choice, myself. I need all the mental energy I can muster to keep up my writing schedule.
However, I’ve always used Jane Hamilton as my role model. She started querying agents in the “A” section of Writer’s Marketplace for “Map of the World,” and didn’t find one til she’d reached the alphabetical end. That agent, she has said in one interview, wrote back and said, “Who ARE you?” As we all know now, she was (and is) really someone. I’m so glad she didn’t give up.
“This all comes down to one basic fact about books: there is no Delphi.
The secret to the Oracle at Dephi’s success was ambiguity, never giving a clear-cut answer to a question. So in that sense this whole discussion is quite Delphic.
I read once that Lucille Ball was told by an acting instructor that she’d never be any good at acting.
Apocryphal. No such thing is mentioned, or even implied, in either the memoirs of her acting teacher, John Murray Anderson (“Out Without My Rubbers”), or Ball’s (“Love, Lucy.”)
And one record company turned down the Beatles because they didn’t think they’d sell and because “Guitar groups are on their way out, anyway.”
Have you heard the Decca audition tapes? They performed badly. Note, too, that just one record company turned down the Beatles. One. Not every single company for whom they ever auditioned, or even dozens. Just one.
Ditto for J.K. Rowling.
Abe Lincoln lost every single election until he ran for president.
No he didn’t. He was elected captain of his Black Hawk War militia company, he was elected to the Illinois House of Representative in 1834 (and reelected to that seat three times), and elected to the U.S. House in 1846.
I recall turning to my friend one Saturday afternoon in 1977 as we watched a preview of a movie before the real show, and telling her, “That one looks stupid. No one is going to pay to see that!” The name of that “stupid” movie? It was called Star Wars.
Are you a movie producer? Because, if not, that story is really pretty irrelevant, isn’t it?
Ball, The Beatles, Lincoln, and Rowling all turned out to be hugely successful.
They did. And they all enjoyed early success, too, hitting the jackpot with their earliest efforts. Which is basically the opposite of your thesis.
At the risk of sending this in past the sell by date, I would like to refrase the question. Suppose there was a seeer who could tell you with absolute certainty wether or not you are going to be diagnosed with terminal cancer between the age of 57 and 60, would you like this seeer to tell you? Would you want to know?
NO. I would not. The joy of life is the blissful lack of knowledge about the outcome of our endeavours, the writer’s job as well as the agent’s job.
Would I like there to be such a seeer?
NO. I would not and thank god there isn’t one.
What should we do if such a seeer appears and starts telling us our future?
Don’t ask me, I am afraid my answer will not be kind.
I blogged on this at https://californio.livejournal.com/106805.html, but the guts of my response is the following:
Another answer to why not tell writers “you are no good,” would be because it will deeply hurt them, perhaps even beyond their writing career. An analogy: when a young woman sees a guy coming to the street, and it is clear what this guy is thinking and it’s out of the question, a well-bred young lady does not say “Sorry, you’re too short, not good-looking enough, you have a weird sense of humor, your taste in clothes is hopeless,” or whatever, she just says, “I’m busy,” “I already have a boyfriend,” “We’re moving to a foreign country,” “My father won’t let me date until I’m 30” or anything to avoid passing judgment on this guy as an individual. To do so would be cruel.
Can you imagine this girl telling the young man, “Not only am I not interested in dating you, but I’m confident no other woman would give you a chance either. I really think you should join a monastery.”
The best path in any tense situation is to be gracious, allow people to keep their dignity. Anything else builds bad karma. And, not to be too Californian about this, hurting others, in any way, hurts the world. I think politeness is an asset even in the 21st century.