How terrible where you when you first started writing? (Or rather practice vs. natural talent?)

Like others have said, you can have a natural talent that will give you an edge up, but you still have to practice and work hard to learn the craft. It's like any other hobby or skill--you can be naturally gifted, but that doesn't mean you're born knowing how to do it. It just means you pick up the skills quicker than most people.

As for me, I have always had a great imagination and a knack for writing. I penned award-winning stories as a child and never stopped writing. But it wasn't until just recently (in my mid-30s) that my writing has reached the point where I feel I'm professionally competent.

There's a thread called Post Your Early Work in the YA forum. I think searching it via the Google search at the bottom of the page will pull it up real quick. You can see how some of us started and compare it to a recent piece of work (if they posted it), if you'd like to...

Only thing is, woaaahhhh, lots of people seemed to be pretty darn great when they first started. Seriously. Except for me of course So... I don't know. Seems like lots of people started somewhere great.

Having said that, and regardless of whether you do end up really good or not, I think it shouldn't stop you from keep trying and practicing. There'd definitely be some fruits of labor from the effort you put in.

Keeping at it helped me go from bleh to...not so bleh but still bleh.

I have no idea. I'm afraid to read my earlier stuff.

I didn't write much fiction in my thirties or early forties (busy with grad school and getting started in a career), but when I started writing fiction again, my craft, and most especially my characterization and storytelling were immeasurably better than they had been before my 15 year hiatus from fiction writing. Of course, I'd been writing non fiction and doing a lot of reading during that time. I'd also matured and had a lot of experiences (and known a lot of people) during that time. Life experience definitely broadens the things one can write convincingly.

My writing has improved over the past three years or so, however. In addition to working on my own projects, I've read a lot of craft books, writer's and editor's blogs, and have participated in workshops, and have been involved in critting groups and forums on writing sites like this one. Studying the craft of writing has given me names for things that were vague concepts before, and it's allowed me to have conscious control over things I did instinctively before.

I think we evolve and develop as writers throughout our entire lives. For me, the two things that have been most important are reading lots of fiction and and actually sitting down and making myself write and rewrite stuff. But studying craft and engaging in workshopping and critting has also been invaluable.

As Roxx and others have said, additional life experience helps too. Especially, I find, with both characters and anything that might for younger writers need research.

LJD said:

I have no idea. I'm afraid to read my earlier stuff.

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I burned some of mine

And the rest either got lost because of a basement flood, or I had them on floppy disks that are now unreadable. I did managed to access a few files and it wasn't horrible, but not something I'd post on here either.

On the other hand, I went to high school with someone who was by fourteen a prodigy and her short stories were probably publishable even back then. Of course, she was a book worm who was probably reading The Hobbit in Kindergarten. She doesn't write fiction now (though she is a Lit Professor) so yes, even outstanding talent is meaningless if you don't put it to use somewhere.

The first thing I wrote was published in the Globe & Mail. I'm still thinking it was a fluke. I write every day. Even when I don't want to. I sit. I write.

How terrible was I? Pretty terrible. I mean, for my age -- I wasn't in double-digits when I realized I loved writing, and was maybe eleven when I started sharing stuff on the internet --, it was good enough to draw praise, but anything is at that age, really. I definitely became better with each new story.

I don't think you need to be born with "natural talent." A desire to write, the ability to sit down and actually write, and a lot of reading can take someone very far.

I guess I was pretty good when I started. I sold the first short story I ever wrote to the first national magazine that saw it. I quickly sold two more short stories and a novel, actually, three stories, though I didn't know about one of them for a while, all within about two months. Not bad for a high school dropout.

There's no doubt that writing, like everything else, requires talent. It also requires craft, but talent is why the craft works for some, and not for others, even when both write for the same number of months or years.

My personal belief is that talent comes in many forms, but basic talent for writing is nothing more or less than the innate ability to combine imitation with imagination. The ability to imitate goes far beyond style in a sentence, it covers structure, pace, flow, etc. Imagination is what makes imitation original You imitate the how, you imagine the what. When I first sat down to write, I'd already read at least a thousand books, and God only knows how many short stories, poems, articles, etc.

From that reading, I picked up structure, form, pace, flow, dialogue, all the basics. I just wrote the how of what I'd read, and added the what from my imagination. Talent means you do learn how to write from reading. Craft is how you hone your ability to do this.

There are exceptions to everything, but I also believe talent usually shows itself very quickly, assuming the writer is actually spending enough time writing, and finishing, projects. And assuming the writer doesn't engage in constant self-sabotage. Becoming wildly successful may never happen, but some degree of success usually comes fairly quickly, or not at all.

I started writing when I was fourteen. While I don't know if I had a lot of talent or not, I will say I cared about writing and actually put my heart into it. Many students I grew up with couldn't give a darn about actually putting any emotion or caring into their writing. They only viewed it as a grade, and their stories had as much passion as a paper bag.

I've been writing mostly fanfic since then and I really don't know anymore. Online fandom writing comes in waves of style that is 'in'. When I was learning to write full stories what was 'in' was making your fic as overwritten as you could, with a detailing of every object in a room. Of course I wasn't the best at this, but I did enough to get a tiny following of readers that quickly left when the next style came into fashion.
All these years bowing to random readers whims to get reviews have really made me lose sight of what actually does work with my writing on a raw level. It doesn't help that my dyslexia makes oddly worded sentences read as totally normal, while well worded ones are flipped and seem weird in comparison.

Yes, I do believe in talent, but I think it can become buried over the years, and sometimes it can be in one area of writing skill and not every part of writing.

I agree with James. Combination of imitation and imagination is spot on. Perhaps imagination is more innate, and imitation is the practicing part. But if you don't have a great imagination, you could probably develop that through practice as well, so it's a tough distinction. I do think that by nature I am more prone to be a better writer than my girlfriend. It has to do with the way our minds operate and also what our interests are. So if neither of us ever practiced writing our entire lives, I think my work would be better than hers. But maybe I only think that because I've practiced and she hasn't. It's really difficult to know for sure.

Awful. I wrote my first novel aged 19, and I was convinced that I would sell more than JK Rowling (this was back in 2001.)

I think I'm just getting to the point of mastering the craft. I am enormously proud of my last book and the WIP.

I sucked massive hairy donkey balls



I think I've got better since then.

Mr Flibble said:

I sucked massive hairy donkey balls



I think I've got better since then.

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Well, you are published through Orbit. I'm pretty sure they don't publish anyone who sucks massive hairy donkey balls.

Personally, I think writing is a mixture of innate ability and learned skill. I think the innate ability comes from creativity, but I think you also need the ability to put words together and get a feeling for their flow. The ONLY reason I say that is because I seem to run into people who think they're amazing at writing (I'm not that great, but I'll admit it) and they end up being terrible. They lack that little touch that makes everything fit.

On the other hand, I think you have to learn grammar and proper writing conventions to write a novel. No one knows how quotations work until they learn.

Myself, I've been writing stories since I was in first grade (we had to do it for homework with our spelling words). I then began writing for fun until I stopped. I started again in Jr. High and High school...Then stopped until college. So it's taken me a bit of time to get where I am now. I always try to keep getting better. I try to learn different ways to word things or different ways to express ideas. I'm also fine with experimenting with tenses or word choices more. But I'm definitely better (and more aware) than I was when I first started.

My writing was horrible! haha I even put it up on a fanfic site and people liked it, which surprises me to this day. I ended up deleting it all and started fresh a few years later after much practice and reading more.

I really think that it's all about practice and talent mixed together. Even the best writers had to have been pretty abysmal at some point, we just never get to see it.

AngelsAvengeMe said:

Even the best writers had to have been pretty abysmal at some point, we just never get to see it.

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Not all writers. Too many sit down to write, turn out something very good, and often hit the top of the bestseller list with a first effort. The list of writers without formal education without anything resembling practice, who sit down and write something good to great on the first try is very, very long.

This is why I think it's all about reading. The one commonality I can find with writers who seem to need no practice, who have no formal education, who seem to know how to write from the first sentence, is that they are all avid readers.

Another way I see talent is that talent is the ability to make what goes in your eyes come out through your fingers. Years and years and years of reading go in the eyes, and good writing comes out the fingers.

To me, the thing that makes a writer is one's natural desire to tell a story or message. If a person has the ability to generate plot, they can be a writer. The only trick is learning a language that allows a story to go from the brain to the page.

In other words, writers are born rather than made, imo.

PsylentProtagonist said:

On the other hand, I think you have to learn grammar and proper writing conventions to write a novel. No one knows how quotations work until they learn.

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But how and where does a writer learn these things? I knew nothing at all about grammar and punctuation. Nothing. I didn't know a comma from a coma,a noun from a nun, or a verb from a vampire.

I did take a couple of days to read a grammar book cover to cover before writing that story, but that was it. I guess it was enough. As for proper writing conventions, nope, nothing. Didn't know after I wrote that first story, either.

I'm not sure what quotations have to do with writing a novel, but I didn't know that, either. I knew nothing except what soaked in unintentionally from all the novels and short stories I'd read. And I had a good ear for dialogue, something I'm not at all sure can be taught, or even learned. I suspect a good ear falls under the talent category.

Jamesaritchie said:

This is why I think it's all about reading. The one commonality I can find with writers who seem to need no practice, who have no formal education, who seem to know how to write from the first sentence, is that they are all avid readers.

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I have to agree on the importance of reading. When I started out, I read a little bit, but only a few favorites. Since I broadened my reading horizons, my writing has improved dramatically.

Jamesaritchie said:

Not all writers. Too many sit down to write, turn out something very good, and often hit the top of the bestseller list with a first effort. The list of writers without formal education without anything resembling practice, who sit down and write something good to great on the first try is very, very long.

This is why I think it's all about reading. The one commonality I can find with writers who seem to need no practice, who have no formal education, who seem to know how to write from the first sentence, is that they are all avid readers.

Another way I see talent is that talent is the ability to make what goes in your eyes come out through your fingers. Years and years and years of reading go in the eyes, and good writing comes out the fingers.

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I was talking more about a writer's first ever writing experience. Not the first novel they churned out (which I'm sure there were many drafts of). I mean sure, there are great writers out there that haven't been formally educated and don't practice much that are able to write amazing works. I've even met one or two. But they all weren't that amazing when they first started.

I do agree that reading has a huge impact on one's writing though. It certainly makes one a better writer.

I don't know. I look back at some of the things I wrote when I was a child and a teenager (my dad keeps everything) and they are not bad. They're still clearly written by a child or a teenager, but they have some good rhythm to them and an occasional resonant insight.

I do think my writing has markedly improved over the past four years or so. I made a conscious decision to be better at it, to learn from the mistakes I was making, to be critiqued and taught and embarrassed and humble. It has helped me immeasurably. I have built on what I think I can see in the work from my childhood and sent the first novel I wrote to the first agent I knew of who sold it to the first publisher to see it. The heartbeat of my writing is the same. The actual writing is much, much, much better.

But as others have said, there's no way to quantify how good or bad a person is. No way to determine by what percentage they have improved, or not improved. No benchmark that suggests "if a person is a Level 4 Writer, they will never be able to exceed Level 8 Writing." You just have to keep trying to improve until you do. Or, you decide not to try to improve but you don't act surprised when you don't.

I always had confidence when writing, and that overcame a lot of mistakes. At first.

But I was bad. Pretty freakin' bad. Like, I read stuff now and cry inside. But also smile. Because I could see promise.

I worked my butt off to get better. Writing a lot. Reading a lot. Workshops. Exercises. School. I soaked it in like a wee lil sponge. What's amazing is that I'm still improving. I read things I wrote from 2 years ago, and whoah. Huge improvement. I read things I wrote last month and I can find ways to make it better.

I've now been writing "seriously" for about a decade. While I won't entirely shred my early work by saying it was bad, it is certainly embarrassing to read today. That should speak volumes for where I am now - at a point where I am proud to share my work. In fact, I felt the transition occur when I would write something, sit back, and instantly know if it was good or bad. That would happen every once in a while early on but increased with each year of practice.

There are so many facets that go into writing that there has to be people out there with immense "natural talent" but no way to harness it, as well as those without any innate abilities but have worked hard and achieved success.

The bottom line is that it doesn't matter if someone has natural talent or not. A good writer is created by practicing and editing. You can, absolutely, be horrible to start (thinking you have no talent) but learn to be a fantastic writer with serious practice. Dedication is all that is needed.

It's the definition of "dedication" that will determine the result.

I don't actually know, because unfortunately I can't go back far enough to really tell. In the 6th grade I wrote a 100+ page handwritten manuscript for class. That manuscript didn't survive, but remembering what I can about it makes me think it was atrocious. In the 7th grade I wrote a very short (4 pages or so) opening to what was supposed to be the next "novel" in the series. My teacher ended up turning it in to the other teachers because he thought it was so good that I must have plagiarized it. Of course I didn't. And after speaking to the teacher I turned in the earlier "novel" to he believed me.
A little later on: purple prose. *shudders*
I only started seriously writing in about the past two years, but even in that time I can see a huge difference.

I really think almost any talent can be learned, if you have a good ear/eye/etc. When I started drawing, it was crap. And I do mean crap.
Now I sell my work professionally, and I'm still improving all the time. Practice is the name of the game. And ample reading/observing.

How bad was I when I first started writing?

Never. I was fucking awesome and still am.

End thread.



In all seriousness, I had no idea of how to plot, use (or not use) dialogue tags, commas (and I still tend to abuse them) or follow the Chicago style of writing. I never read the book, much to my shame. All I did was write what was in my heart and in my head. I learned on the go, as many writers have, and I've been fortunate to have worked with a few very talented editors who set me on the course to being a little better at style than I used to be.

Am I better now? Well, I've had two papperbok novels come out so far this year, another digital novel should be out by Friday, and I'll have the second installment of the Lindsay/Jo trilogy ready in the fall. I think I have improved, but that's due to hard work, sharp editing--and that consisted of my editors suggesting that this or that didn't work and DO IT THE FUCK OVER until I got it right.

I've never had any trouble with my imagination. When you write fantasy, you end up living in a fantasy world when you write. That's my take on it. Stylistically though, I still have a path to follow and I'll keep learning for as long as it takes.

As for innate talent, yes, I do believe that some of the writers out there have more 'natural' talent for vocabulary usage, metaphors and what have you. I had to develop mine. But the real test is how long you can stick with it. Perseverance counts for a lot in my book. I stuck with it on the advice from an older and more established author. I never gave up and never will.