(Note: This was inspired by the question “What were your favorite subjects in school?” This is what I came up with. Forget Virgina Woolfe and Toni Morrison. This is my definition of stream of consciousness.)
How do you realize you’re good at something? When do you realize? How do you even define being good at something? A lot of talents are extremely subjective, and different people have different definitions of good.
I had two great loves in my school life. One was music, particularly the vocal kind. My family has a musical background. My great grandfather went to the musical conservatory of Vienna before moving to America and playing for Zigfield on Broadway. He played every instrument, but his specialty was trumpet. His daughter, my grandmother, wanted to be an opera singer. However, my great grandfather wouldn’t allow it. He was of the opinion that all opera singers were whores, an opinion he formed through work experience, apparently. (You know, because he was a musician. Not because he frequented the whores.)
My grandmother still loved to sing and was classically trained. She sang in talent shows and at weddings. She also taught piano lessons locally. She gave me my foundation in piano and purchased my instrument that I still have today.
I played piano from the age of 5 until I was 17. I took up the flute in fourth grade and played until 10th. Even at that, instrumental music never made me feel as alive as singing. I wasn’t much for practicing any of the above, and though practicing voice does lead to improvements, it’s an easier music to make without study than the others. Could that be why I was drawn to it more than instruments, or could it have been ability?
I’m not gonna sit here and say I could’ve been the next Céline Dion. I still struggle with the amount of vocal talent I actually have. That said, I do recognize that I’m better than the average Joe who can simply carry a tune. In elementary and middle school, I got to sing special descant parts that soared over the rest of the choir. I sang solos in the junior choir in my temple, and I was part of a special auditioned high school choir from my freshman year onwards.
I knew I was a good singer from the time I was a little girl. People complimented my voice, and I think recognition fosters people’s feelings love of their own talent. It certainly doesn’t hurt!
Unfortunately, though I aspired to be a professional musician throughout high school, in college I accepted that I wasn’t good enough. Not to make it as a professional Broadway performer anyway. I knew I didn’t have the same kind of belting voice that the most successful Broadway actresses have. I knew I totally choked at auditions. I knew I would probably marry my boyfriend, which I did, and I would want to have a steady, stable life with children. I didn’t feel auditioning and not knowing where my next job would come from was going to award me with such stability.
I still find myself thinking about the vocal and acting talents of others, which is only fair as I am trained in these areas. I used to write about “American Idol” for an online newspaper. I got endless joy out of critiquing the performances of pop star hopefuls, many of whom were… not great. Now, at this later stage of my life and in a place in history where some humans are more concerned with the feelings of others than once we were, I cringe to think of how I reveled in the criticism I rained onto the contestants. Though I myself auditioned for season 7 of Idol, I didn’t make it past the initial group auditions held at arenas, something never shown on live TV. Was I not good enough? Was I just not what they were looking for that season? Who really knows?
The bottom line is this; what right did I have to take pleasure in publicly shiting on the dreams of people who were arguably more talented, and inarguably had more bravery, than me?
Why do we enjoy that so much as a society? I suppose we like to have opinions and have others validate or argue with those opinions. A few years ago, an acquaintance of mine went on a Facebook rant about how she had finally seen Hamilton on Disney +, and she didn’t see what was so great about it. A mutual acquaintance who is a professional Broadway performer called her on this. He left a friendly but firm comment pointing out all the good Hamilton did for the subjects of history and diversity regardless of how you felt about Lin-Manuel Miranda’s voice. He also reminded her not to shit on the art of others because that’s just generally not cool. Everyone expresses themselves differently. Maybe the hip hopperetta style of Ham didn't work for her, but if it spoke to millions of others, isn’t that what matters? Ham inspired an entire generation to learn history in a way others never had. The style may have spoken to a subset of people who would have otherwise been untouched by the Founding Fathers. It would tell the subsurface story of immigration being an essential thread of the American quilt as Lin intended.
This is not to say that we aren’t entitled to our opinions about others and their art. But with social media, it’s a lot easier for those opinions to seep into public awareness. Go ahead and voice your opinion to your mom and your best friend, but if suddenly 500 people who only know you tangentially are being influenced by your opinion and begin hating on something they didn’t create, thus inputting negativity in the universe… well, that’s just a lot.
This, of course, brings up questions of morality regarding the jobs of professional reviewers. Feel about that how you will. But it is interesting that we sometimes put our faith in the hands of people whose background in whatever subject they’re writing about is pretty unknown to us. What authority do some of them really have?
Keep in mind that I did toss around the idea of becoming a professional theater reviewer for about five minutes. But also I have a Bachelor’s degree in theater studies.
We’re all entitled to change our mind, particularly as we get older.
To return to the question of talent. It sometimes breaks my heart that I didn’t have enough faith in myself to pursue acting, and/or singing. I was comparing myself to the incomparable Idina Menzel and other belters of the Broadway stage. But how many professional Broadway actresses are Idina? Maybe I’m less talented than her, or maybe I’m talented in a different way. (Who am I kidding? Of course I’m less talented than Idina Menzel.) What I mean is there are plenty of talented people with arguably less talent than others still making a living out of their art. Maybe they’re not voicing Elsa in Frozen, but they’re still getting paid to do what they love. Had I stuck it out, had I had the confidence in myself, had I been comfortable with a little bit more discomfort, chances are I could have done something in this arena.
Maybe part of my problem was self doubt. I let my questioning whether or not I really belong in the arena in the first place get the better of me. I never felt thin enough to be a professional actress for one thing. And, as someone taking part in select groups, I was surrounded in high school and later in college by people who were infinitely more talented than me. Instead of embracing that talent, taking time to collaborate with and get to know these people, I spent a lot of time being jealous of them.
I doubt myself even as an adult. I’ve been singing in a choir again for the last seven years. Sometimes I hear my voice angelically leading others and love the sound. Sometimes I wish I could have a brighter, lighter tone quality when I compare myself to those sitting around me. Sometimes the choir director comes over to the first Sopranos and tells us that we’re flat, and 100% of the time I assume I am the erroneous one. Sometimes people in the choir compliment me and tell me they love my tone quality or assume I’m a music teacher because I am that good. Sometimes I score a solo in a concert, and then I am convinced that I am just slightly under pitch. I am constantly second-guessing myself, and never feel as if I am owning my vocal talent as confidently as it needs to be owned.
I want to discover my true voice. You would think after 30 years I’d be somewhat in touch with that. But there are a lot of times that I imitate someone else’s voice in a certain song or style. I’m not sure I really know how to put my own spin on anything. Which makes me feel like an untalented hack. Which in itself is ridiculous given how many people make a living off of being imitators. Come on, someone. Stick me in a 90s pop cover band where I can be as hacky as I want to.
Now, my second great school love is an area of my life where I have much more confidence in my own talent. If you haven’t guessed it by now, just scroll back through the full length of this bizarre rambling. Boy, this chick thinks a lot about her own writing. She never stops! Some people don’t shut up when they’re talking; I clearly don’t shut up when I’m writing.
I think I became aware of my writing talent in approximately first grade. I’m pretty sure I have a memory of writing a short story that was much longer than anyone else’s in class and being quite proud of that. (Ironic that 30 years later I understand the patience and tremendous amount of talent it takes to write an effective story that stays within a certain word or page limit.)
I knew I was smart when I was a kid. I knew I was put into advanced track classes as early as fourth grade and took part in a pull out program called A.T., which stood for Academically Talented. (I adored AT and the matrix logic problems we learned how to do there.) And yeah, I felt an immature level of superiority over those who didn’t get to go sit in a supply closet with us once a week and solve brain teasers.
I also knew that converting feet to miles gave me a tremendous amount of anxiety, so words were definitely more my intelligence.
Though I did still compare myself to others in overall academics and come up short when I didn’t make the all A honor roll or the WCTC Spell Down, I always just knew I was one of the best writers. Didn’t matter that Alan Reyes had better grades. I could write fictional circles around anyone in my class.
I became known by my peers as that girl who always wrote a lot. In sixth grade, we got the chance to write a sequel to Rudyard Kipling’s “Ricki-Ticki-Tavi,” and while most of my classmates clocked in around two pages, my piece was a whopping 11 pages. I made up my own words when we were tasked with writing new verses to the “Adventures of Isabel” by Ogden Nash. I knew it was all good stuff. My English teacher, one of my favorites ever, Mrs. Ginny Perez, recognized me with an award for creative writing at a special ceremony.
I’ve been writing “books” for as long as I can remember. The vast majority of these came to me as fleeting ideas. I’d write a few paragraphs and move onto the next one. In my spare bedroom, in the bottom drawer of my old desk, I have a LOT of these very short, hardly started novels.
But when I was about 12, I began a journey that would last several years - The Book series. This was Backstreet Boys fanfiction. My friends and I, disguised as older teens with different names, dated the Backstreet Boys, who looked the same and had the same names but weren’t a popular boy band, although they did get together and sing for one of the couples’ weddings in The Third Book.
These were the first novels I ever finished. They were ridiculously fun to write, on top of being just plain ridiculous. I had several friends who were die hard fans, mostly due to the subject matter. But when they used to wait with bated breath for the next single page of my writing, it was a great feeling. I’d pass a page to Saman sitting behind me in history class when Mr. Korneski had his back turned. Or Erin and I would sunbathe at the pool while I laid on my stomach and churned out writing and she laid on her back turning the pages I handed her. It felt good to have someone yearning for this next bit of a world I was producing.
I had no aspirations of becoming a writer when I started as a young girl, or even when I continued as a teenager. I just did it because it was fun, and these ideas would pop into my head. I must have had some dreams of getting published, but I never looked at what went into it. My pie-in-the-sky hopes were reserved for theater.
And then (excuse me while I shit on others’ art), Twilight became a thing. A big, massive, phenomenon type of thing. I read the books. I was entertained by them. I even went to a Breaking Dawn midnight party to see how the whole thing would wrap up. But, compelling as the books were, I never accused them of being well written.
And I thought to myself, self, you are a kick ass writer and you know it. If Stephanie Meyer can do it, so can you. And I bowed my head over my stove and prayed to whatever deity was listening for a great idea.
It came to me in no more than two days.
That was the seed of The Seed of Magic. And that was nearly a decade ago. My goals have changed and I’ve learned a lot since then.
To sound only mildly conceited, I aimed to become the next JKR, or Joanne (imagine me, saying that in as contemptuous a voice as possible) as I call her these days. I aimed to create a world that rich, the story that important. No pressure or anything.
And though I already knew it, writing The Seed has been a real lesson in how much time talent can take. It’s not easy to take the time to nurture your talent. Aside from being distracted by that pesky thing called a full time job, sometimes even when I have free time… I don’t feel like writing. I want to work out (okay, I always make time in my schedule for working out- it isn’t a free time activity), bake cookies, indulge in drinking coffee and reading, meditate…
But shouldn’t my talent drive me? I believe in The Seed. I want it to be birthed into the real world and be impactful and inspirational. So does my talent sabotage me? Is it like, “Nah, girl. You ain’t meant for fame”? Or is it my ego or some other part of my subconscious that stops me from succeeding?
Or is it just part of being human?
Argh.
Is the problem with talent that many of us are burdened to be blessed with it but too many gatekeepers keep us from successfully showing it off?
Note: In the midst of working on The Seed, I entered some short story contests for the first time in my life. In the first one, I wrote something cobbling together some tidbits I had written here and there. What I submitted was definitely not something I had ever envisioned writing. And I got honorable mention! It was a bit of a shock as I’d never entered a contest like this before. And because, even though I know I’m a good writer, I’m still full of self-doubt in the same way I am with singing. I know there are plenty of other good writers out there. But I was recognized by professional judges.
It felt awesome.
The second contest I entered involved writing something inspired by my own book. Though I didn’t win, I was recognized as one of the better stories, and therefore was published in a book! Yay! My writing is in a… YA Anthology about Lust, which is actually kind of weird, but hey, whatever. There is a book you can buy on Amazon, that also sits on my bookshelf, and it has a story written by me! Yay!
I recently read the artistically therapeutic book Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert. She challenged us creative souls out there to reevaluate our definitions of success in terms of said creativity. Do we need to be professionals living only on the profits of our art, or is success merely enjoying our creative process? Who are we really creating FOR- our audiences or ourselves?
With a minimal amount of soul searching, I can tell you that I create for both. It’s true that even if I never publish a book, I’ll continue writing for the rest of my life. If nothing else, I’m a journaler. I write nearly every day of my life. The feeling of a ballpoint pen on smooth paper is one of the most soothing ones for me.
But creating and crafting with words feeds my soul. I have been known to feel a fire in my chest when I open just the right turn of phrase or edit out a single word and know that my writing is infinitely better for it. I cannot just give that up because I’m not a full time professional author.
So.
So I shall keep writing. Proofreading and editing? That stuff is horrible for an entire novel. But I’ll keep at that, too. And I’ll go through the agonizing pain and horror of submitting query letters to agents and having them send form rejection letters.
And in the meantime, I’ll keep writing.
And maybe I’ll find an agent who falls in love with my characters and my world as much as I have. And they’ll ask for a first chapter or a full manuscript. And maybe they’ll take me on as a client and market my manuscript to publishing houses.
And in the meantime, I’ll keep writing.
Maybe some wonderful publisher will agree to sign my book. Then it’ll take years to get it edited and polished, get cover art, etc.
And in the meantime, I’ll keep writing.
Ultimate goal, while we’re over here dreaming, is a Netflix series or movie made of the series, starring Chris Hemsworth in the mentor roll. And, yeah, maybe that’ll happen. And my dreams will come true. And I can quit my teaching job and write professionally all the time and share my writing with adoring fans and do my best to ignore the critics. Oooh, and I regularly fantasize about doing a panel at ComicCon.
But truthfully, even if none of that happens, I’ll keep writing. Because I write like a breath. Yes, I love sharing my work with others, but it’s not the reason WHY I write. I write because I have to. Because I’m driven to. Because I spend a lot of my time planning stories or blog entries in my head. Because, even if I can’t do it professionally, I’m still good at it, and that talent still deserves a home.
Maybe all that is talent. The ability and the drive. And maybe others get to see your talent and maybe they don’t.
But if it’s bringing you joy, who really cares?
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