Talent vs. Practice

While at “Life, The Universe, and Everything”, an annual sci-fi/fantasy writers symposium in a nearby city this past week I heard an interesting presentation from Howard Tayler, creator of the “Schlock Mercenary” webcomic. The premise he put forward (and backed up with various studies) was that in life practice and persistence will generally trump talent.

He introduced this idea with a study conducted with children in the New York City school system. All of the children in the study were given an age-appropriate IQ test. Then later they told half of the children, “You did well! You must be talented!” The other half they told, “You did well! You must have worked hard!” They then later offered the children a chance to take another IQ test, but gave them the option of taking a test similar to the one they had already taken, or one that would be more difficult. The “You must be talented” kids generally chose to take a similar test, while the “You must have worked hard” kids generally chose the harder test.

Later they gave the kids a third test, this time one that was several years ahead of their age group. The “Talented” kids did poorly, while the “Worked Hard” kids not only did significantly better, but many of them told the researchers that was their favorite test yet.

The idea, then, is that more important than talent is that you can succeed by working hard. The talented kids, evidently, only believe they are talented until they encounter contrary evidence, at which point they fold, suspecting those who dubbed them “talented” may have lied to them. Hard working kids, on the other hand, believe that they can figure things out if they just keep working hard.

I see some limitations to this idea, and I would be careful to take it too far, but I think there is also a certain validity to it. Or at least it seems to fit nicely with my own experience and self-image. Take my writing, for example. I discovered writing in seventh grade when my English teacher had us write a short story. She liked mine enough that she asked permission to enter it in the school writing contest. I agreed, and I won, being advanced to the district-wide contest where I won second place. That was cool!

Each year thereafter when the contest rolled around I would write another story to submit. For the next five years I went to the district competition and averaged second place every time. And when I graduated from high school and went to college I largely gave up creative writing. I took a class or two, but I knew that you had to be especially talented to make any money from writing, and while I was talented, evidence showed that there was always someone more talented than me, even though I was the only one who had consistently won every year. Besides, I did submit a story to a magazine once, and they didn’t like it. In short, when offered the chance to take another test like the previous one or to take a harder test, I stuck with what I knew I could win.

Fast forward over twenty years. I took up writing again after moving to a new city. I needed something to do with my free time, and that seemed as good as any, since I could never entirely stopped writing. I just stopped trying to do anything with it. But after successfully completing NaNoWriMo, I decided I wanted to continue writing.

About that time I discovered the Writing Excuses podcast, produced by writers for writers. The underlying message of these podcasts is that writing is work, but work you can manage if you are persistent and keep developing your skills.

This was music to my ears. In the intervening years I had learned that I could accomplish an awful lot in life with the willingness to work hard, even if it was something I wasn’t initially talented in. Given enough time I could figure things out. I could apply this same persistence to writing, and who knows? Perhaps someday I could be a professional writer, something I’d talked myself out of years before.

I’m not a professional writer yet. But I’ve been writing almost continually ever since, having completed two novels in three years. I’m making good progress on a third. Hard work? I can do that.

The more I think of it, I seem to be a case study for Mr. Tayler’s hypothesis. I was placed in the “Gifted and Talented” program as an elementary student. I was told I had a talent for music–as did everyone in my family. And yet practicing was never something I enjoyed. Neither the flute nor the oboe that I briefly tried came easy for me, and don’t play either now. Only singing was a talent I was able to ride far enough, though I annoyed my college voice teacher with my lack of dedication. I played in the Caribbean steel drum band for a couple years before it got too hard. Talent only took me so far. Practice was not something I was good at.

Something changed once I left college. It may be the sense of responsibility of providing for a family that kept me working at things even when they didn’t come easy, or it may be I just found things I enjoyed enough to practice. I don’t know. But somewhere I learned the value of showing up, of continuing to work at something until I understood it. And that has served me well.

But enough about me. I think there’s something to Mr. Tayler’s advice. We may be doing our children a disservice by emphasizing talent too much–or hard work too little. Yes, I took satisfaction knowing that while there were other kids who could write better stories than me, none of them ever beat me twice. None of them ever even placed twice.

But I think I got the wrong lesson from that. I still went about things the same way every year: Scramble to crank out a story a few weeks before the contest, have my mom proofread and type it up, and then submit it, sit back, collect my award, and then not worry about it again for another year. It never occurred to me that if I were to spend more time improving my writing I might I have placed first more than once. But at that point writing was something I did, something I was talented at, not something I had to work at. After all, if you have talent you don’t need to work at it, right?

I sometimes look back and wish I’d not stopped writing after high school, that I’d not convinced myself I couldn’t make a living at writing. I wish I’d spent more time at it when I was in college and had so much time! But considering the number of areas I was coasting by on talent at the time I doubt I would have done anything differently. I was laying the seeds of learning to work hard, but those were in the supporting areas, the things I did in order to pay for college. It would be another five to ten years more before I began to realize just how far hard work could take me.

Not that I’m trying to blow my own horn (much). I’m essentially a lazy guy. Working hard is great, and it’s done well for me, but I still don’t like doing it if I don’t have to. It’s just that being a big boy seems to require doing things I don’t want to. I think that was another thing that I had to learn along the way. I’m just glad I’ve kinda, maybe learned it just a little. Enough to get by, anyway.

Hand me the remote, will you?