If you have no concept of grammar, and no clue what makes a story good, you can write your whole life and never produce anything worth reading. To improve requires learning and practice, both of which take time and effort.

How do you "stick with something" without putting forth any effort?

Perhaps you mean you it must be a conscious effort to improve.

I completely agree. Here's one of my favorite quote on writing. It's by Stephen King, and you can find it in Danse Macabre:

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I think that writers are made, not born or created out of dreams or childhood trauma—that becoming a writer is a direct result of conscious will. Of course there has to be some talent involved, but talent is a dreadfully cheap commodity, cheaper than table salt. What separates the talented individual from the successful one is a lot of hard work and study; a constant process of honing. Talent is a dull knife that will cut nothing unless it is wielded with great force. Discipline and constant work are the whetstones upon which the dull knife of talent is honed until it becomes sharp enough, hopefully, to cut through even the toughest meat and gristle. No writer is ever handed a sharp knife, and we hone with varying degrees of zeal and aptitude . . . . If you write for an hour and a half a day for ten years, you’re gonna turn into a good writer (but, I hasten to add, only if you have the talent there to begin with).

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I don't believe that anyone can really assess that. The bottom line is this: What makes me say writer-A has talent and writer-B doesn't is really a matter of taste. For example, I don't think R. A. Salvatore has a shred of writing talent, and yet . . . .

(He might, but I'm not going to be the one to assert it.)

It seems to me that the only way you can assess talent is by improvement. You have to see improvement over time. Once you start submitting, you have to see improvement with the results . . . from the standard rejection letter to the standard rejection with a short note, to the personal rejection letter . . . etc.

And even once you start getting published, you should slowly see a gradual movement from smaller markets to larger ones.

Of course, all of that takes time. Stephen King was once asked how many rejections should a writer get before he gives up. "Certianly not 6," King said, "and certianly not 60. Probably not even 600. But if a writer receives 6000 rejection letters without getting published then its time for that writer to reasses his goals."

6000 rejections . . . . I wonder how long that would take.

At any rate, I don't believe any beginning and relatively unpublished writer is in the position to say "I am talented" or "I'm not talented"; nor is any one person in the position to say to a given writer, "You're talented" or "You're not talented." It's all a matter of practial results, it seems to me.

I'd say people artisticly inclinded experiment with different kinds of arts, just as people who are athletically inclinded usually play a number of sports.

Look at this fragment from a year and a half ago and shudder:

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I think far too often hard work and perseverence are dismissed and assumed to be talent instead.

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Perhaps nonwriters place too much emphasis on talent. And I think beginning writers can often feel that they don't have any talent; but that's more a lack of self confidence than anything else.

After I asked my question--How long would it take to amass 6000 rejection slips?--I decided to figure that out.

Suppose that Joe Writer were to write a short story every two weeks. And suppose that he sends each story to 20 markets. That's 26 short stories a year, totalling 520 rejections (not all in one year, of course, but you get the picture). That means Joe Writer would have to write steadily for about eleven and a half years to reach 6000 rejections . . . so long as he could maintain that pace. I think then one could safely say that it's either time to quit writing all together, or at least it's time to start writing only for one self and start saving that postage money.

I don't say this because I want to talk about giving up. That's not my point. I said this because I think it illustrates just what it means to persevere. All writers suffer through feeling that they're wasting their time, chasing a ghost of a dream. But I think it sometimes helps--it helps me, at any rate--to think of some mark (6000 rejections, perhaps) and telling myself that I won't think about giving up until I cross this mark.

[This message has been edited by Jeff Vehige (edited January 20, 2005).]

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I've never seen that. Every real writer I heard who has talked about what it takes to become a writer always talks about hard work and perseverence.

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Referring to talent, I don't think anyone is necessarily born with writing talent. I think what we mistake for writing talent is merely Creation talent. Some people are born to create something out of their life experiences. And I think that it is merely the channel they choose that defines whether they are a writer or a painter or a musician. (I don't consider singing part of that, because you're either born with the cords, or you're not, and no amount of practice will change that.)

Now that being said, I don't necessarily think that any one person is going to be better at one thing than another without lots of honing. I can't play a single instrument, and I can barely paint, but I've been reading for years, since I was three, and I know Words, and therefore writing has always been the salve that soothed my creative itch. I discovered that when I was told to write a sentence with my spelling words in first or second grade, and instead wrote stories, highlighting the spelling words with a pen.(Made for some interesting lines, I can tell you.)

But I never thought that I could draw. I always assumed that my talents lay in writing. But recently, in the last year, I worked up the courage to try, literally. I went out and bought paints and canvas and thinners and brushes, as well as several books on painting and drawing. And I taught myself the concepts of painting and drawing, and then I put canvas to easel, paint to palette, and started doing it.

Now, I won't say that I'm good. I'm not. But I have improved from where I started at, and my drawing with pencil and charcoal and Conti's has improved immensely. This was after years of telling myself that I had no gifts in that area.

Now, maybe I'll never sell a painting or a drawing; I probably won't. But I know now that what I confused with a lack of talent was merely a lack of skill. The creative talent is there - always has been. I just needed to teach my mind and hands how to channel it into a different medium.
It will never replace the joy I get from crafting a story, but it doesn't hurt to learn something new.

I think what it really comes down to, after all the lectures and classes and books and practice, it really comes down to who is a creator, and who isn't, how much of a creator they are, and how much they love it.

That's what it takes to succeed in this business and in this art.

For instance, any human can learn to play piano provided they the basic physical and mental requirements--and, of course, a piano. Yet it's the talented ones who know when the musical phrase they just played / peformed was complete crap, and will say "won't do that again." The non-talented ones have no clue and plug away doing the same thing anyway, oblivious to anything except their own opinion.

Meaning, someone with okay vocal cords can learn to sing good, but they will never be as good as someone who was actually born with beautiful vocal cords, no matter how much they practice.

It's like saying that a four foot-tall person could learn how to slam dunk a basketball on a regulation height goal. It's just not going to happen.

Oh, and congrats on Carnegie. My sister sang there too, back when she was a music major. Sang for the Prez, too, at a fund-raiser thing in OKC.
Of course, foolish girl decided to change to a business major later. Gave up the music. I wanted to smack her for that one. What a set of pipe she has! And she'd rather make money.
People will remember Gates in the same way they remember Carnegie, Rockefeller and the others. But who can remember a minor CEO who made a few million a hundred years ago? Anyone?
But I bet people will remember the musicians and singers for hundreds of years.
They'll be listening to Ray Charles six hundred years from now.

However, it also applies to musicians and singers. If you're goal is merely to be more famous, then no amount of success will ever be enough to save you from despair in the end.

No amount of work will get you past that 20% mark nor will any amount of genius make up for the 80% work. Musically speaking speaking: Can effort alone produce another Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart? Or would Mozart have any lasting legacy if he had dawddled away his time and neglected to compose?

On the other hand many trully remarkable writers and composers were never acknowledged in their lives and many went to their graves believing they were failures.

Hard work will develope your skills, but you cannot surpass your own physical limitations. I have been practicing martial arts my whole life and one of the hardest lesson any student has to learn is that every single person has a limitation.
But knowing your limitation also becomes a strength. My own strengths lie in strategy and instruction. I am very good at implememnting technique in action. I am very poor at solo physical performances. Although my technique may be 100% correct it will never have the grace and beauty of a professional dancer.

Should I quit becuase my techniques will never be "hollywood" friendly?

No.