John Scalzi, author of “Old Man’s War” recently wrote about why he started writing in his blog, “Whatever.”

After giving the reasons that got him started, he adds:

“I suspect I was born with a gift for writing; I don’t spend much time worrying about the provenance of the gift, since that seems a little like tempting fate. I’m just glad I have it and I work to develop a measure of craft to go along with that gift.”

One of his readers, author Jeff Porten, replied:

“I seriously doubt you were born with a gift for writing — more likely, you were born with a certain amount of imagination and a creative impulse. The “writing part” that you were born with is that in your first cracks at bat at stringing words together, you were good enough to receive the admiration of your audience, which then led to a virtuous cycle.”

This is an interesting discussion. I think that Porten is right that the acclaim of readers will certainly fuel the fire of creativity and urge one who already has an interest in writing to explore it more. And the opportunity to get paid for doing so can certainly be an even better motivation than recognition.

On the other hand, one has to have the talent to write to begin with to receive that acclaim and salary.

Perhaps it isn’t a “gift for writing,” so much as a “gift for storytelling.” Some people are excellent at telling stories in written form; others tell beautiful stories orally. Some, like Alfred Hitchock, are masters of telling a story visually, but must rely on others to write the framework of the story itself. Some people are lucky enough to have talent in multiple forms of storytelling.

Like Scalzi, I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that there was some “innate predilection for symbolic expression” that such people possess. Otherwise, it seems to me, we’d all be telling stories and getting published.

In fact, Patrick J. O’Connor writes about the relationship between two hemispheres of the brain and the relationship between the Central Nervous System and the Autonomic Nervous System in predicting the creative potential of an individual. His article, “Crativity and Intellect: Crossroads of the Information Superhighway,” is a bit over my head when it comes to explaining the science of brain functioning, but it is interesting to note that he began exploring this possibility as he was working on a science fiction novel of his own.

You will follow O’Connor’s article more easily if you are a biology major, but he does make some interesting points about brain function and relationships between different aspects of one’s mental mechanism that supports the hypothesis that creativity is not merely a result of intellect or IQ; there must be some type of a “non-cerebral agent” operating.

However the actual process happens, I do think it is possible that there are certain people who do have the creative ability more firmly developed than others; but it is only when those people find some outside motivation to exercise it that they actually discover their talent. There are plenty of people who set out to write the “Great American Novel” and quickly discover that they cannot do so; it seems reasonable to suggest that there are people who may not be aware of their talent until they are encouraged somehow to amuse themselves and “stumble upon” the talent to amuse others.

I just hope that the talent I think I have is real enough.