FlashFiction.Net

In his essay "The Talent of the Room," Michael Ventura argues that the true talent of a writer is his/her ability to write (alone) in a room, and thus "talent" becomes the writer's ability to answer the  these "fundamental" questions:

How long can you stay in that room? How many hours a day? How do you behave in that room? How often can you go back to it? How much fear (and, for that matter, how much elation) can you endure by yourself? How many years—how many years—can you remain alone in a room?

◊

I do love that about writing and find myself missing that aspect of it, being in that room, with just me and my writing. I have this story I tell. In it,  I find a love note written from a neighbor to my mother. I begin to type love note after love note, hiding them all over the house for my father to find. This story is like a lucid dream. I don't know what of it is real, what isn't. Sometimes I think it all is and can even remember being in the attic, hidden away. I can hear the clack clack of the keys, and it sounds to me like a baseball being hit over and over.I imagine it to be the birth of me as writer. If it is real, it possses the reality of myth.

◊

Oh, yes, the point. The point is that sometimes I think it is okay for writing to be a group project in which writers (partially) prove their mettle by how much criticism they can take, how many people they allow into the process, how willing they are to yield, how grateful they are afterward for everyone's help. And sometimes I think it is okay to go back to that room, alone, and pound it out for one's self.