by Elton Gahr

Created on: May 14, 2009

The debate on whether writers are born or made is one that comes most vehemently from frustrated writers who see others whose work they like better than their own. This is an understandable thought as there are certainly those who are good at writing and seemingly gain skill at a far faster rate than others, so does this mean that writers are born. That there is an inborn need to write, that may or may not come with an inborn talent?

The first of these two parts of the equation is the need to write. No one can really be a writer without the obsession. Someone who just finds it relaxing may keep an interesting journal but without a drive the sane mind will move onto other things eventually. Yet the question remains is this obsessive need to put words on paper an inborn trait?

As writing is a new concept compared to humanity it is useful to replace the idea of writing in this equation with the need to express oneself in a meaningful way and keep a record of the past. We can then include things like cave paintings, statuses, and other forms of communication that existed when people couldn't write.

This alone doesn't answer the question but it brings us closer. The desire to express oneself is an inborn part of the human experience and the method writers use is in many ways unimportant in the grander scheme, it is the expression that is important.

This leads to the question of natural talent. There are two ways that talent expresses itself and these two are not always connected. The first is in the speed that a person learns a skill. You have met this type of writer, someone who picks up on writing far faster that in seems possible. They put very little effort in compared to you and their writing becomes good quickly.

The second type has to do with diminishing returns. That is the amount of effort put into the skill of writing and the improvement that is returned. This is not always connected to the speed at which one learns. There are people who learn the basics of writing quickly but also quickly begin to feel the impact of diminishing returns. They learn quickly and stop improving just as quickly. They can still get better but every step of improvement takes more work. Meanwhile someone who took longer to learn may find that he continues to improve at that same rate for a much longer time and in the end is a better writer.

If you are willing to work hard enough it is only the second of these types of talent that really matter and while there are a lucky few that will improve both quickly and for a long time they are not the vast majority of good writers. Instead the vast majority are those who work very hard and continue to work hard for a long time.

Talent is a useful thing but it is not a defining thing. Writing is both a craft and an art. As a craft hard work wins the day hands down and as an art it is both hard work and talent. This means that with simple hard work even someone with no talent can reach the top 25% and nearly everyone has some talent.

Answering the debate, if writers are born or made, is one that is most difficult because both sides are true answers. There are those with talent, and those who love to write. Yet many of those people with true talent don't work hard enough to ever make themselves writers and so those who love the job often become far better simply through hard work.

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