The Talent of the Room

I just sent this to my friend Valley on her blog, so I thought I'd post it here too!

This is an essay that Brian Morton gave to one of our MFA workshop classes, and it stuck with me. It probably stuck with me because I knew it revealed my essential failure as a writer. The gist of it is that no matter how good a writer you are, the most important part of being a writer is having the "talent of the room." Meaning that you have to endure the task of sitting alone in a room for some long amount of time actually writing.

For a long time I only even tried to write short stories. I didn't think I had the patience to even try to write a novel. Then I tried a couple of times and got through half a novel before I realized I had no idea where it was going and it sputtered out.

Then I really didn't write for years and years. I felt I'd lost my inspiration. Now I think maybe that was because I always wrote too much about myself. Coming back to writing and looking outside myself for inspiration suddenly seems to be a lot easier. But I think that had to happen over time.

But the talent of the room is still hard. To write the book I wrote--yeah!!! I wrote it no matter what happens to it--I had to do nothing but write until it was done. I was too scared to stop. I thought I'd quit. I think I might have. And now I'm feeling scared to start the next one, even though I kind of can't wait. I don't trust myself to be able to carry through.

When I was younger I thought that being a writer was about being good at it. But the older I get and the more books I read, the more I realize that it's far less important to be good than to have 300 pages in your hand. There are a lot of good writers, but there are a lot less of them that have 300 pages in their hand ready to print out on a computer.