"You're So Talented!"

[Ladeeda]

I draw. Have been for years. Silly pictures and just started a weekly webcomic. I'm not bad, if I say so myself (and believe others).

But I can't stand it when someone calls it "talent". Or worse, as someone just did, "luck". In that case, it was more like "You're so lucky you can draw like that!"

They're meant as compliments, but thoughtlessly ignore the fact that talent is a load of hooey.

I don't have talent, I have skill. I sucked at drawing when I started. So I practiced and observed and incorporated and learned. Nearly a decade of drawing and I've finally crawled and scraped my way to the levels of "not too shabby".

Sure, some people are born with natural abilities, but most aren't. And assuming any skill was simply there from day 1 disregards all the hard work, hours, criticisms, and whatnot that a person has to go through to get good at anything. I mean that for art, music, sports, running the cash register, doing statistics, whatever.

I know those phrases are meant as a compliment, but it's a HUGE peeve.

[bara]

Ive known no one who I would consider talented that did not put in a lot of effort to get that way. I know that doesnt go along with the dictionary definition of the word, but Ive found that I often have to give words my own definition to fit them in the ways they are most often used.

For example, my brother has a talent for fixing things because he has been doing it for so long.

I hope your web comic does well, I have a few I visit daily.

[Andara Bledin]

Talent is not a "load of hooey." There are some things that some people are just naturally good at.

That said, without training and work, all the talent in the world won't ever take you past being just good.

Most people don't know how to compliment for shit.

Anyway, good luck with the webcomic.

^-.-^

[Gravekeeper]

I never practiced writing or comedy ( I wasn't even the class clown or anything ). Originally, I wanted to be an artist. >.> Which is what I did practice throughout school. I surprised teachers a couple of times when tasked with any sort of creative writing project. But at the time I was just happy to get an A on something and never gave it much thought.

There's really zero precedence or reason for whatever semblance of writing talent I display. Drawing was always the thing I got the "You're so talented!" thing on throughout my childhood and teenage years. If it had not been for the advent of personal computers while I was in school, I would have become an artist I imagine.

Mainly because I can not write by hand worth shit. I hold a pencil in my right hand like I'm left handed thanks to my grandparents swearing up and down I was left handed when I was a kid. My mom tried to correct it as I grew up with special pencil grips and corrective therapy but the damage was done. As a result I can't write more than a paragraph before my wrist begins to tire out and get horrifically sore. Writing a full page is agony. So I didn't exactly enjoy writing in school. -.-

[Ginger Tea]

Mainly because I can not write by hand worth shit. I hold a pencil in my right hand like I'm left handed thanks to my grandparents swearing up and down I was left handed when I was a kid. My mom tried to correct it as I grew up with special pencil grips and corrective therapy but the damage was done. As a result I can't write more than a paragraph before my wrist begins to tire out and get horrifically sore. Writing a full page is agony. So I didn't exactly enjoy writing in school. -.-

Thats the first I've ever heard of someone being corrected into lefthandedness, normally I hear tales of draconian methods used to instill right handed penmanship, the likes of tying the hand down and slapping the hand with a ruler (decades ago (perhaps when my parents were young) so done in the days of the cain in school).

<thread jack>
Myself if I want to read what I've written down later, I write in 5mm square paper in all caps or use 3 squares high for 'joined up' writing.
I took typing lessons when our school had 'options' iir the last year that was in use, vs computing as we were using BBC B's in 3rd year in 88/89 and I doubted businesses would be using them seeing as I had moved on to the ST/Amiga world, my 1st/2nd year at another school had me spending morning assembly time practacing neat hand writing, only for it to be ruined with science with dictation for first class, so it all turned back into a scrawl just to keep up.

Now I just use a pen to tick off my order sheets and write down cryptic to all but me notes, then I try to write neat and usually fail, if I need any lables printed out from the office, but if I had access, I would do them myself.
</thread jack>

[HYHYBT]

Calling it a talent doesn't mean you had to be good at it the first time you tried, or that you haven't worked hard.

------

Count me as another who was pushed toward left-handedness. It didn't get that far, but Dad saw that I often ate with my left hand (which is, after all, closest to the fork) and jumped to the conclusion that the school was forcing me to write with my right hand. So for a while he was making me practice left-handed writing after finishing my real homework. Made worse by, the year before in what is now called preschool, I'd always asked to use the "lefty" scissors (though I was trying to use them right-handed) because the only difference I knew in them was that the regular scissors had plain metal handles and the lefty ones had rubberized green ones... and nobody had really explained what makes one direction right and the other left, leaving me also wondering why the teacher always told us to keep to the right in the hallway, yet lined us up on one side going to lunch and the other coming back.

[BlaqueKatt]

They're meant as compliments, but thoughtlessly ignore the fact that talent is a load of hooey.

I don't have talent, I have skill. I sucked at drawing when I started. So I practiced and observed and incorporated and learned. Nearly a decade of drawing and I've finally crawled and scraped my way to the levels of "not too shabby".

then I'd say "talent" is correct in a manner of speaking, but not for your acquired skills, more for having the talent to keep trying when others would have given up.

one of the definitions of "talent" is a capacity for achievement or success, which I think fits.

Perseverance is a talent that many lack...

[HYHYBT]

Put that way... certainly you have a capacity for achievement in this area, as you've gotten good at it with hard work.