Extreme Talent

 

 

Have you ever known someone so talented that they did not know that what they did was special? I mean someone that did something so easily that they didn't know it was difficult.

 

Every now and then I meet someone that is so good at something that they do not know it is difficult. It could be any talent from tying knots, carving, drawing, speaking, writing, cooking, foreign languages, swimming, singing, hiking, shooting, tracking, gymnastics, .....

 

Sometimes they have been born with the talent and do not know that what they do is difficult because it never has been for them. Other times it is experience that makes them good at it, but they have been doing it so long they seem to have forgotten the struggles to get it right.

 

As writers we are always learning our craft. Students are often urged to extend their envelope, expand their horizons, try something new, different, difficult.  Good advice.

 

In school, teachers, perhaps with some justification, were always telling me to try harder. But the army taught me that sometimes you can try too hard and the effort becomes counterproductive. In advance training we were allowed off to go into town on Friday nights as long as we passed Saturday morning inspection. Our floor gathered together, decided what needed to be done and what needed to be doubled checked before inspection. We did it and went out Friday night. The sergeant on the floor below decided his men didn't deserve Friday night off until they earned it by passing inspection. Each inspection they failed, he had them clean later into the evening and roused them earlier and earlier in the morning to clean. They didn't pass very many inspections, if any. We passed all of ours.

 

Abraham Lincoln advised folks to always grab problems by the smooth handle. Why make things more difficult for yourself than need be?

 

Max Brand was probably the most well known of the twenty some names that Frederick Faust wrote under. He wanted to be a classical poet and worked very hard at that. For an extended period of time he published the equivalent of a book a month and a short story per week. His westerns and many of his characters like Dr. Kildare, Dr. Gillespie, and Horseman Destry have entered the fabric of American literature and culture.

 

Kate Braverman is an incredible talent. Fiction, non-fiction, you name it as long as it is experimental, she writes it. Her list of books and inclusions in anthologies is long (see www.katebraverman.com ).

 

I kept thinking what wonderful things she could write if she would relax.  Instead of writing for the ten most intelligent people she knows, write for the rest of us. Who did Shakespeare write for? Write what is easy for her and know that there is value in that too.