So You Want to be a Writer?

Oldest Son loves math. He loves theoretical math and physics, and he does things in his head that would send the average person running for a calculator (I know I still need to "carry the 1"--he never does). His new goal is to go to MIT and be a math professor. This week, for his gifted math class, they each had to interview one person who uses math at his or her job and tell the class about it, make a poster, and so on. Oldest Son chose my friend, Richard, who is an engineer. Richard graciously came over last night and the two of them did problems--talking about psi and cylinders and air pressure in cylinders and calculating it. FUN TIMES! (If you like math.) Then the most important question for the report: Oldest Son asked "What qualities do you have to have in order to do your job?" The qualities Richard listed were "likes math, enjoys taking things apart, pays attention to detail, very organized." The last two basically eliminate my kid from the job. So I said something along the lines of "He's good at theoretical physics and less so about that whole organized thing." And that got us talking about Myers-Briggs and where a theoretcial physicist falls on the scale (creative AND mathematical). Which brings me--of course--to writing.

What qualities embody the writer? I always think I'd list curiosity. Loves words and English. Observant. But I think I've been doing this so long, that there are parts of it that I have come to accept aren't things you can learn. There are some people who might want to be a writer, who will churn out manuscript and short story after short story, and there is some essential element that no amount of practice . . . can remedy. On the flip side, we always say "never give up." It's a mantra. We talk (as yesterday) about how we grow and develop and so on--we move on from the crap we write to better crap. But maybe the career path is different with writing. There's no real certification process. You can't learn a formula. No memorization. It's more intuitive. (And yet is it any more intuitive than looking at an engineering problem and knowing how to solve it?)

Now, as an aside, as a mom, I sincerely believe in helping my kids shoot for extraordinary lives. When Oldest Daughter decided at 3 to be a violinist (and believe me, she decided at 3), I had no idea that would mean sacrificing for 18 years and scraping together every cent for violin lessons and an 18th century violin. But . . . here's the thing . . . she had perfect pitch at 3. So there was "something" that couldn't be taught, and an innate LOVE--absolute love--of music--she would literally be ILL without music. And I don't mean that in some casual sense. It would make her ill. She has something that can't be taught--but NOW it's all about how hard she works at college, where she is in the first violin section of the upper-level orchestra at music university. She practices HOURS a day.

Same with son . . . math is who he IS. It's how he thinks about the world. But I can see with my own eyes he is theoretical about it, verus being a pocket-protector-wearing organized person. I'm still trying to intuit where this theoretical love of math can go--physics of course comes to mind. If you know me and know my blog, you can imagine my sheer delight that I might have a theoretical physicst on my hands--but . . . I can "see" that he thinks in x way versus y way. Innately. Baby Girl . . . it's art. She sees the world in colors and art and beauty. It's my job to now figure out how to nurture what they were BORN with. So I do have some beliefs about this writing thing born on the "laboratory" of the family.

So today I toss it out there. What qualities do you think you need to be a writer. And are there some that are innate? What can be learned? What's talent?