I have always said that I do not have an aptitude for languages and my creative writing absolutely sucks. Making my nightmare worse here on steemit is the fact that English is my second language and there is nothing flowing naturally from this limited database of mine.
I was crazy enough to put my "Brave girl panties" on and enrolled for an English course this semester. What a challenge this is going to be . . . . with my first week of assignments, I already started to sweat blood, learning some very important grammar rules, having to read a few articles and giving my opinion on the discussion board about what I have learned from it. The worst of all by far for this week was the "love letter" to an object I had to compile. It took me hours trying to suck some creative juices from "who knows where all" to complete this assignment.
This week's reading and discussion board assignment included four articles of which "Born to Write" by Hal Zina Bennett was my chosen one as he argues against the idea that writing is a magical gift bestowed on a few. What I have learned from this article and by studying up a bit more on the net about the subject, opened up a whole new world for me. I now have the confidence and belief that I too with hard work and determination can become a better author here on steemit.
The article "Born to Write" started off with a quote by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi which I feel is incredibly encouraging and true: "When we choose a goal and invest ourselves in it to the limits of our concentration, whatever we do will be enjoyable. And once we have tasted this joy, we will redouble our efforts to taste it again. This is the way the self grows."
Being born with a talent or an aptitude for writing can surely assist in making the task easier, but often we see in nearly every discipline that talent without passion, determination and hard work fades along the way. Stephen King had this to say about talent: “Talent is cheaper than table salt. What separates the talented individual from the successful one is a lot of hard work.” The Famous John Irving, an American novelist and Academy Award-winning screenwriter said the following about his talent: “I wouldn’t say I have a talent that’s special. It strikes me that I have an unusual kind of stamina.”
I always felt quite content in saying that I do not have the aptitude for languages or creative writing, but yesterday after reading these words below, I had to face the reality that I have always been making an excuse, taking the easy way out of which there is none. Barbara Baig in “The Talent Myth, The Writer, April 2012” explained: “Talent, I have long told my students, is the assumptions we make about other people’s abilities that keep us from developing our own.”
We all here on steemit can develop a talent or aptitude for writing with the endless supply of tools available at our fingertips. It requires of us to seek the knowledge in the craft of writing, obtaining the necessary knowledge of the chosen subject, and knowing what our niche is. We need to practice a little self-belief (we are all original and have some value to add), build up the courage and take the bull by its horns with the sheer determination to succeed.
I wish you all who struggles with English writing good luck and will leave you with the words by Sylvia Plath: “And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.”
Please drop me a line in the reply box as I would love to hear your voice on this topic!
Keep smiling, reading, writing and voting!!!