Born Writers

A wannabe asked on a forum, "r gud writers born or cn u learn it?" I gritted my teeth, shortened my "every piece of writing is an opportunity to forge good writing habits" speech, and thought about the question. Nature or nurture? The short answer is "both", especially for nonfiction, qualified for fiction. If you are born with high verbal skills (as measured by I.Q. and proficiency tests), highly sensitive and aware of your surroundings, and with a good memory, I suspect you could become a good nonfiction writer with ease. You might even be a natural story teller with imagination to produce decent fiction. It helps if you're born into a milieu that values reading, story telling, and the world outside your clan. Lacking these natal accidents, I think you can learn to develop the verbal aspects of your intelligence, deliberately sensitize yourself to notice changes, details, and to capture and recall them from memory. No matter how many notes I take in writing and/or tape record, there's always more in my mind about a conversation, person, place than I can capture at the moment. [writing]

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