Since I was about 11, people have told me that I'm a talented writer. I wrote my first short story that year and followed it with a series of my own "Frog and Toad" stories.
When I was in high school, an artist I respected a lot told me I was one of the most talented young writers she'd met. Another lady, at a poetry reading, approached me after I read a few things and told me, "you...yeah...I dig your flavor."
From that, I gather that whatever sort of talent and/or skill a person could have related to the art of writing, I have a decent enough amount of it that other people think I'm pretty good at it. A film producer, in rejecting a project of mine, wrote, "the author is obviously talented." As kicks in the nuts go, it was one of the nicer ones I've gotten.
So, OK, I'm a talented writer.
So what? That and whatever your generational understanding of how much coffee costs will get you a cup of coffee, as they say.
Surely if I were talented in something else, that something else would have benefitted me in some way by now. He's an obviously talented chef or basketball player or surgeon – these people aren't disgruntled with their lot in life, grinding away, perfecting ones skills and craft only to, in the words of Edgar Allan Poe, be afraid to open their eyes lest there be nothing to see.
And as an art, it's awful. I mean to be good at.
I love writing. Make no mistake about that part. I'm happy to write and be good at it. But it's the crummiest art form to be good at.
Painting, in comparison, can be nearly anything. It can be hyper real, look exactly like the thing it's supposed to be. Or it can be surreal, which is to say look like the triangular, melting, bubbling, swirling version of whatever it's supposed to be. Or it can be dots arranged in some pleasing way or just smatters of paint, drips, drops, smears...people love paintings, no matter what form they take. Mostly, I think, they like painting because they're aware that they themselves can't recreate the same. Even a scattered Jackson Pollock. People don't seem to be capable of frenetically sprinkling paint dapples at just the right spot on the canvas.
Same holds true for sculpture. How many people really think they can hammer away at a rock until it looks like Jesus or the Virgin Mary? Probably not too many. Even clay-wheeled sculpture is that way. Once you go beyond ashtray or coffee mug, you've extended well-beyond the average person's sculpting skill.
Music isn't as complex as it seems but people still don't seem to think they can do it. The layers of sound make music rich and complex, but basically it's just a series of patterns, 1-2-3, 1-2-3, 1-2-3-4, 1-2-3...And music ticks me off, as an art form, as a person who is good at a different art form. You don't even need to come up with your own songs. There are plenty of bands making a living doing other peoples' songs, cover bands, they're called. Tribute bands go one further and try to look and sound exactly like The Eagles or AC/DC or whoever. And that's a thing people will enjoy. Even successful bands will drop a cover tune on an album every so often, even have one as a major hit. And people love it.
Writing isn't like that, though. I can't just write a Ernest Hemingway novel and put it out as my own. Well, I can, but I'll not only be sued I'll be ostracized for being a fraud and a plagiarist – the worst thing anyone can be in my mind. My list is plagiarist, murder, rapist and so on.
The difference between writing and every other art form is everyone can write. You don't send e-mail on a flute. You just write. It's one of the most fundamental skills anyone can develop. Everyone does it, so how hard can it be? I guess that's the notion there. Oh, but everyone does it is the same as saying everyone dances at a wedding. True enough, but clearly not everyone is good at it.
So what is the point, in having a talent and skill for something nobody sees any value in? It's like being the world's greatest gum chewer or the person who waits more patiently at a bus stop than anyone else. Nobody cares. Everyone chews gum, or probably has at some point. So it's difficult to appreciate the level of talent or skill someone brings to a ubiquitous task.
But writing well isn't easy, it isn't something you do by smacking keys on a keyboard and suddenly words appear and it is something people like me spend time artfully perfecting.
But hooray. I'm a talented writer. The compliment is well-intended and gratefully received. I just wish there were a grimy place I could write, have people sit at a bar and put bread in my jar and say man, what are you doing here?
See? Nobody appreciates plagiarism.
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