How Important is Writing Talent?

I’ve always wanted to play the mandolin… but I have a tin ear.

I’ve wanted to tango… but I have two left feet.

I’ve always wanted to write poetry… but my eighth-grade English teacher told my poems bite.

Have you ever denied yourself an activity because you didn’t think you had the talent?

That’s a mistake; it turns out that if you have the desire, talent isn’t necessary.

That’s right. If there’s an activity you really, really want to do, go ahead and give it a whirl.

Follow that up with a heap of practice, and one day you might be a world-class performer.

Talent, it turns out, is the least important thing. Some people wonder if it’s even necessary at all to a person’s success.

What about Mozart?

Geoff Colvin, author of “Talented Is Overrated” makes a great case that Mozart’s genius was due to effort.

Did you know his father was a famous composer? That he started training Mozart at the age of three? That his early compositions weren’t written in Mozart’s own hand? That dad always “corrected” his son’s work, and quit composing around the same time Mozart started?

In fact, Mozart didn’t write his first masterpiece until he was twenty-one. Precocious yes, but you might be a kick-butt composer too if you had eighteen years of heavy-duty dad training.

Tiger Woods had a similar background and a very similar dad.

According to Colvin, it’s practice, not talent, that makes perfect. However it takes a specific type of practice to be perfect, which he talks about at length in his book.

Definitely worth a read.

So what’s stopping you?

Not a lack of talent for sure.

Go forth and be… a competitive hotdog eater, a belly dancer, a competitive bowler or whatever floats your pretty little sailboat.

Desire and practice is all you need.