No Talent Necessary

The Freakonomics column in Sunday's NYT magazine had an interesting article this week. According to the 900 page scholarly study, Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance, talent is highly overrated.
This study shows that things like memory and hitting a baseball can be improved by practice, and innate talent has little to do with the results. The bottom line is that working hard at something pays off, regardless of starting ability.
The real cause for misconceptions is that people are more likely to work harder at things they like. Thus, the child who's a violin prodigy get there from hard work, not because of some genetic predisposition. And they probably like to play all those scales up and down the neck, so they are more likely to work harder and longer at it.
The good news for writers is that there's no need to worry if you were born with some sort of "skill" or have talent. Just put in some hard work and lots of practice writing, editing, and critiquing. To paraphrase Octavia Butler, "Don't depend on talent, hard work is more dependable."

Comments

[Lou]

Hogwash. Hard work is what fine tunes / hones the talent. Don't tell me that hard work is goinf to add 10 mph to your fast ball. Rubbish!

[Lou]

Hogwash. Hard work is what fine tunes / hones the talent. Don't tell me that hard work is goinf to add 10 mph to your fast ball. Rubbish!

[Pat Lundrigan]

Yeah, everyone knows it takes steroids to add 10mph to your fastball.