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And there’s aristocratic guilt working as well. Ours is an age that believes in democratic possibilities, every man a writer, every woman a star. Talent, with its implications of a gift dished out by the gods, not creative writing programs, is politically suspect.
That’s on the left side of the talent issue. On the right side is how “talent” is used in everyday language, which is to describe basketball players who can jump higher than you and me, or contestants who do really well on reality TV.
But the main reason for the dearth of writing on the subject is that, analyze and speculate all you want, artistic talent is as mysterious and inexplicable a force as the universe contains.
Still, it may be possible to say just enough on the subject that the mystery is, if not solved, at least seen in its clearest, most lucid inexplicability.
So let’s imagine a writer named Alejandra, one of the 50 most talented novelists in the country. (And, at the level we’re talking about, there aren’t more than 50.)
Like most writers, her talent is mostly verbal — if she’s good at anything, she’s good with words. Her vocabulary is large; she values words for their own sake, their sound, their suggestions, the intricate ways they combine and modify, their history. She has a sense for which words are too archaic to use for any but the most specialized purposes; she has a cautionary eye for which words are too trendy to outlast the decade.
Beyond this, she has the feeling when she’s writing that she’s able to say anything she wants, which armors her with tremendous confidence, giving her the sense that words are friends, allies, collaborators, not enemies she must wrestle to the ground.
Her imagination is the most mysterious part of her talent, the one that more than any other is surely a gift from the gods; teachers may as well tell students to kiss the back side of the moon as to tell them to go out and develop an imagination. We’re not talking daydreaming here; we’re talking controlled imagination — imagination hardened by restraints and craftsmanship that, far from shackling imagination, allow it to soar.
Some novelists go far without much imagination at all, relying instead on their documentary sense, or dramatic events that are mostly autobiographical, but they labor under some crippling handicaps, since imagination is the vital ingredient in those other key writing talents: originality and range. Our Alejandra’s work has both.
Imagination applied to the human condition is empathy. Good fiction is difficult without it, great fiction impossible. It’s a talent that’s in short supply today, when the ironic take on life, cynicism, scorn, is everywhere triumphant. Many writers have trouble finding empathy for characters who are poorer, less intelligent, less successful than they are; others have trouble finding empathy for characters who are smarter, richer, happier.
It’s why the great Russian writers are still worth reading — Tolstoy, Chekhov, Dostoyevsky. We get the sense that there wasn’t a human being ever born who they couldn’t identify with and sympathize with and characterize from the inside out, in prose so direct and simple the words disappear.
So, verbal facility, world-class imagination, all-embracing empathy; those are the big three of writing talent. There is a fourth without which the first three mean nothing, but let’s hold off on that until some of the “lesser” writing talents are mentioned — briefly mentioned, though they may take 30 or more years to master.
These include the various talents that lend themselves to technical facility: an ear for dialogue; sensitivity to atmosphere and place; the capacity to organize information, juggle chronologies; an instinct for drama and plot; a wide familiarity with the work — the strategies — of writers who have come before.
Self-discipline enters into it; a large part of Alejandra’s talent comes from having a Puritan work ethic. Like all good novelists, she also has a feel for the comedy of life and the tragedy — an understanding of how these work in what might seem contradictory senses.
Her observant eye helps, of course. Her excellent self-education and wide experience of life. Her sense of humor and her ability to slap a lid on it. Discrimination; she understands (from the insane amount of reading she’s done) what makes good writing good and bad writing bad. Her willingness to take risks — artistic courage. The right creative makeup in her personality — a blend of storminess and serenity that can be a tricky thing to balance. And hugely important for any artist: her ability to withstand disappointment.
All these qualities — at least if a writer has a deeper purpose than merely putting words down on paper — count for nothing unless they are motivated by the fourth and perhaps rarest of the great talents: longing. You have to want to write perfectly and you have to want this more than anything.
People dream about being writers for the freedom they think it will bring, the self-satisfaction, the checks, the chicks, but how many dream of it for the bliss brought by the rendering of a fully realized story, paragraph or sentence? Some do. Some artists, even while buried beneath the avalanche of mass culture, care for fine writing with a desire stronger than any they know.
Orwell calls this “aesthetic enthusiasm,” a phrase that makes it sound a trifle dotty, which to the rest of the world it probably is. He defines this as “a perception of beauty in the external world, or in words and their right arrangement. Pleasure in the impact of one sound on another, in the firmness of good prose or the rhythm of a good story. Desire to share an experience which one feels is valuable and not to be missed.”
This is a plain, no-nonsense definition — and yet I would pull the motivation back one step. For Alejandra, this desire is all bound up with emulation — with a longing for artistic perfection that comes from recognizing artistic perfection in others, admiring it so much, being moved by it so much, that she wants to accomplish that feat on her own.
That’s Alejandra — that’s what fuels her art when she sits down to work. The words come to her tightly fitted to their purpose, serving an imagination that has found the perfect characters in which to pour all her empathy, in a subject and theme that say what she’s been put on Earth to say, which is something no one has managed to say before.
Craft has been mastered after a long apprenticeship — form, order, architecture. Her talent is a buoyant, palpable force, though the word “talent” probably never occurs to her, nor any other label for this magic collaboration between heart, brain and soul.
A tricky scene is mastered. A difficult chronology is solved. Characters are imagined so clearly they seem living on their own. Her stylistic standards, high already, are brilliantly surpassed. So absorbed is she, so wedded to her work, it feels as if she’s the only writer in the world, the last writer, and the responsibility of this, the awe, is another part of the wind that forces her on.
The words come. The pages come. No excuses. Talent drives.
W.D. Wetherell is a novelist, essayist, and story writer who lives in Lyme.