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I saw another post on tumblr talking about how talent is a small factor in artistic skill and how you can get really good at anything if you practise enough and just ...

Doesn't anyone else think of talent as the thing that lets you practice enough? Like, talent isn't a trait which says "Gain +2 to checks with X" it's the combination of numinous factors that make practicing a thing feel good and rewarding and something you can spend a lot of your free time on even when there is an internet connection *right there*. So saying "Oh yeah, just spend hundreds or thousands of hours doing a thing and you'll be good at it" is true but also there are more psychological gating factors since if the first ten or hundred hours feel like pulling teeth (And IDK if you often get through that but certainly don't expect you to try if it's optional).

Is this model non-obvious to non-me people? Is it just wildly incongruous with what everyone else thinks of as talent?

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From:

potofsoup

Hm.... well, by your definition, my hobby isn't drawing or writing, it's "storytelling", since that is the Thing that I want to do in my spare time, which currently translates to some combination of art (which I have more natural intuition for) and writing (in which every word feels hard). Not to mention roleplaying, which I used to have time for and hope to have time for again. So what is it that ultimately drives my hobby? And how much did talent feed into my pursuit of this hobby?

What sort of advice would you, a non-artist, like to see re: art and natural talent? I'm thinking back to being 16 and having grown up in a family environment where art was just not something that people did because it was frivolous and pointless. I saw a friend draw something and thought "I can do that, too," so I went to the library to check out a book about drawing, and then bought a sketchbook that I hid from my parents and started filling it.... What advice would I have given my past self? "Hey you have talent in this so keep doing it"? "Hey if you keep doing it you'll be able to tell the stories that you want to tell"? "Hey, it's going to be hard because no one is going to take you seriously but it's worth it"?

From:

contrarianarchon

I think trying to depict someone as having a single ultimate hobby is unnecessarily reductive; people are complex and will do many things, some of which they are doing because their heart is asking it of them, and some of which they're doing for messy practical reasons, and probably there are other reasons for doing things that doesn't fit into that dichotomy.

As far as advice-i'd-like-to-see. Hmm. I'm obviously not the person who this advice is aimed at since I will for self-described reasons, probably never act on it. Probably I'd like to see more people provide practical advice or sources for practical advice with their moralizing about hard work and practice are all you need; you can also save a lot of time if you use X program and follow these tutorials, etc. Esp focusing on stuff that lowers the barrier to entry in a practical way, rather than a social way.

(The last one of those three sounds like the piece of advice I'd like most to hear about a new hobby from my future self, but I maybe wouldn't trust anyone else to give it? The first one is, according to my model of talent meaningless; talent is the thing that makes keeping doing it happen even though the world is turned against you. The second one depends on your internal state more than I know to answer.)