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Are writers made or born? This is something I've constantly flipped and flopped on. Writing is definitely a talent for if you're a writer, you are talented indeed. But as always, all talents. Is it something that can be taught or acquired, or is it something more primal? Is it an innate gift of sorts? So Author Jack's essay in Writers Digest talks about this exact question
Shahnaz Ahmed
@bookishpodcast · 3:31
But that's going to take a lot of effort. And now, speaking of the same growth mindset, the whole concept of if you start at zero, then you have nothing to go on. Right. So then the contradiction is you need to be born with some talent, some ability to write so you can take it to the next level. Now, with that said, here's the other thing. You can have an insanely talented writer
Nicholas DeGrange
@NicoNico · 3:13
I had to take another writing class, and my teacher kept failing me because he was like, You're not writing in your own voice. And I was like, look, man, I'm not going to be a writer. Just let me pass. I'm studying other stuff, like, I'm just trying to get out of here. And he was like, I'm not going to grade you accurately until you show me your writing voice and out of that birth, this book
Shahnaz Ahmed
@bookishpodcast · 1:44
I mean, you could say, Well, obviously, I was trained because it was innate in me. We all have a brain that's innate in us. And that brain that's innate in us can train us and bring us out of wherever we are and whatever level we are. So you are speaking to the proof of saying you're starting off at basically baseline at almost zero, and you're getting all the way up there. Congratulations. First of all
Neal Damiano
@NealD · 3:53
I can't answer that. But you can certainly learn the craft of writing, especially film reviews or music reviews. Have you? Like I said, it's a different animal than writing novels or fiction or anything else like that or screenplays. Even so, for my own sake, get better as you do it, and you develop in your writing
Despite my claim to being a writer, I feel writing a review is more than just me talking about the pros and cons of a book or a movie it demands from us a certain expertise and understanding. So a review cannot just be an expression of our personal opinion on something. It's got to be something more a way of seeing a creator's work against the backdrop of their previous body of work or something more grounded and not just a sharing of our impressions of their work. Here
Neal Damiano
@NealD · 3:41
But you can certainly learn it as well, because at the end of the day, it's really just kind of an expression of how you feel about the film bad or good, but you have to develop and incorporate synopsis into it and critical analyzes into it. And that stuff you learn from studying film. I went to school for film, so I learned this. I have a degree in film and not to talk about myself or toot my own Horn
Sreeja V
@Wordsmith · 1:38
And you can improve the craft, as Shannon mentioned, but to be able to appreciate it in the first place, I feel you need to be able to gravitate towards it. Right. And in case of writing, you start by reading again. Like Nico mentioned, there is a lot of intake and there is a lot of assimilation of ideas within you, and you choose to express them through your words
Archana Sarat
@archanasarat · 3:39
So Stephen King says that you cannot turn a bad writer into a competent one, and you also cannot turn a good writer into a genius. However, he says that you can turn a competent writer into a good one with lots of hard work. Actually, the exact words that he says with lots of hard work, dedication and timely help. In my opinion, writing basically requires two fundamental skills. One is language and the second is empathy
You totally nailed it. Archana writing does call for just two things, a great command over the language, sensitivity to the feelings of others, or the ability to imagine some thing that's not actually happening to oneself at that moment. So in other words, empathy, which I agree is something that cannot be taught in the traditional sense. One could argue otherwise, but that's probably as well for another day. And thank you for that tidbit about Baratia. It was fascinating to know
So, Shannon, Nicholas, I totally hear what you say. And I am with you when you say that it isn't always about what you write. It is about how you go about writing it that really counts. So the attitude, the patience, the perseverance and all the work that goes into it have a huge role to play
Samuel Kane
@samkanewriter · 1:39
Thank you all so much for inviting me. In my opinion, I think that a question really comes down to content. If you wanted to create a commercially successful book, there's certain formula out there there that a lot of people enjoy, especially people who like to buy books. You can kind of hit specific genres, hit a specific style of, like, romantic interest, a little bit of intrigue, potentially some magic. Right. And then you can create a book that would be fairly successful
Shahnaz Ahmed
@bookishpodcast · 4:47
So this is such a weird serendipity to kind of cross this way. And I will say this conversation about our writers born or made. I've never really asked this question of my authors and my author interviews. But, Sam, this is going to come up for you on the podcast. I'm going to ask this of you when we do chat and Archana. I love what you said about empathy
Samuel Kane
@samkanewriter · 1:51
So when it comes to writers being born or made, you might have the skill to craft great art inherently or early, but it's actually what you decide to do with it. That really matters to me. If you're going to tell me how to best approach somebody that I'm in love with, or how to deal with loss or how to navigate what it means to grow up to be an adult and you don't do it with the best craft, that story still will resonate with me
Wow. What a great question for me. I think it's interesting. As I've spent the past few years really diving in and studying the Masters, the Masters that have lived. That's obviously very subjective. But the Masters that have lived, they haven't written anything themselves like I mean, with Jesus, he didn't write anything, you know, so many different people, like they didn't write. Other people wrote what they said, they might have sang or whatever
Swell Team
@Swell · 0:15
Archana Sarat
@archanasarat · 0:25
What you said made me think there is this famous Benjamin Franklin quote where he says, either write something worth reading or do something worth writing about. I guess all those whom you mentioned did do great things that made others write about them
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