In Chinese culture, there’s a ceremony called Zhuazhou (抓周). On their first birthday, children are placed in front of various objects and encouraged to pick whichever catches their eye. Tradition says their choice reveals something about their future career.
A toy car might point to a future engineer or driver, a book to a scholar, a pen to a—sigh—writer.
If you’ve ever hung around aspiring writers’ circles, you’ve probably encountered the eternal debate about talent.
It like this: some people are born with a natural gift, and that gift makes them better. If you’re good, you have talent. If you’re not, you don’t.
What science says (and doesn’t say)
Science is still undecided on whether talent really exists. A fascinating piece in Scientific American—“Is Innate Talent a Myth?” by Hambrick, Ullén, and Mosing—reviews research on the subject. Their conclusions seem to suggest some innate talent must exist.
They propose what’s called the Multifactorial Gene–Environment Interaction Model (MGIM), which suggests that genetic predispositions interact in complex ways with environment, practice, and other factors.
Their bottom line?
“There is no denying the importance of training for becoming an elite athlete, but […] genetic factors matter, too.”
They also cite a 2016 study arguing that the old “born versus made” debate is too simplistic. In other words, it’s not just nature or nurture—it’s both, in messy ways.
Summarized, the authors argue:
- Practice alone can’t explain most of the differences in skill.
- Broader abilities sometimes improve performance, even among experts.
- Personality influences skill both indirectly (through practice) and directly.
- Side experiences, like work in other fields, significantly boost expertise.
- Genetics play a role both directly and indirectly.
- Models that only account for practice fall short.
But this isn’t settled science. Other research points the other way—like Sakakibara’s study on perfect pitch, where every child trained successfully learned to recognize notes. Or Sinatra and Lambiotte’s Quantifying Success, which highlights how much we underestimate plain luck.
So, if you’ve been patiently following along through this flurry of citations, you might be wondering: “But wait—if your post is called Talent Doesn’t Exist, what are you really arguing?”
More than genes
Even if Hambrick and colleagues are right, genetics alone wouldn’t explain everything. There’s also:
- Deliberate practice (the unglamorous repetition we call training).
- Environment and education (with special weight on early childhood education). Here, privilege sneaks in: growing up surrounded by books, or in a household that encourages exploration, makes a difference.
- Collateral skills, picked up outside of writing itself.
A mystery novelist would call these: motive, means, and opportunity.
Of course, we could imagine that—everything else being equal—the “talented” writer might have an edge. But everything else is never equal.
To actually prove talent, we’d need to isolate genes for writing (and separate them from genes for related abilities like language, creativity, or introspection), and then test them under double-blind conditions. Not happening anytime soon.
And so, comparing writers across different ages, backgrounds, experiences, training appears like a pointless exercise.
The publishing world
Publishing isn’t a lab. If cognitive scientists don’t have a final answer, the rest of us certainly won’t.
If there were a gene for writing, could we identify it after the fact? Could we really declare who had more talent: Nabokov or Kundera? King or Connelly? Le Guin or Asimov? Me or Bukowski?
We could maybe come to an agreement on who was more influential or whose books were more influential. But these would be opinions, not diagnoses.
Even if talent were tied to a single gene, I’m willing to bet not all literary masters would have it.
And here’s something I’ve noticed: no one in publishing really talks about talent when it comes to established authors. It seems irrelevant—and maybe that’s for the best. In a way, the marketplace is more egalitarian: success depends less on hypothetical DNA and more on whether a book sells.
Among beginners, though, the “talent” debate never dies.
Why? Because it creates a sense of belonging. If “talent” exists, then some people are “talented.” And those people get to feel special—by birthright.
The seductive myth
Talking about talent is dangerous because it divides people into in-groups and out-groups. Writers versus non-writers. The chosen versus the rest.
It’s tempting to think some people “must” write because it’s “in their blood.” But if that’s true, the opposite is also true: some people “must not.”
This imaginary line splits the world into “talented” and “talentless hacks”. And it’s a lie. Even talented people write bad books. And skill, no matter how great, comes with no moral superiority and no special rights.
Talent, as a concept, flatters the ego and excuses laziness. If you believe you’re talented, you can wait around for inspiration, convinced that your gift will carry you. And if success doesn’t come, you can play the victim: “Why don’t I have success, if I deserve it?”
On the other side, those told they “lack talent” might actually believe it—sabotaging themselves, feeding impostor syndrome.
Do we really want a Gattaca-like world where only the genetically “fit” get to write? What about those who want to write simply because they love it? Their desire is just as valid as any supposed gift.
Drawing that line would be not just foolish, but authoritarian.
What actually matters
Here’s a truth: skill is a mix of factors—predisposition, education, luck, practice, side knowledge. Of those, the only ones we can control are practice and how we connect writing to the rest of our lives.
My background, upbringing, and any genetic quirks are behind me. What I can control is what I do now: writing, and learning.
That’s why talent, as an idea, is useless. Even if tomorrow I discovered I “had” it or I didn’t, it wouldn’t change what I need to do to get better.
Of course, not everyone starts from the same place. Being surrounded by books as a child probably helped me. So did not being hungry, or sick, or in a war zone. But even here, simplifications are dangerous. Some people start writing late, some write in poverty, some write in trenches.
Sure, there may be only one Nabokov in a million. But you don’t have to be Nabokov to publish—or to write at all.
In conclusion
I’d rather believe in as few false myths as possible—especially those that exclude people. And so, for me, talent doesn’t exist. Or at least, it’s meaningless until proven otherwise.
What matters isn’t anyone’s genetic makeup. It’s simply: what do you have to say?
If this topic is of interest to you, I’ll suggest a watch to this Zoe Bee video on meritocracy:
Trust me, it’s worth a listen.