Theme-Plot Integration Part 10 - Use of Co-incidence in Plot

We've been discussing a contrast/compare among 3 novel series, 20 novels in all.  This post is about these books, and contains spoilers as well as opinion and a suggested "take-away" from this study.

Here is a link to Part 8 where we launched into this 20-book comparison, and Part 9 with links to them all, and the index to previous parts:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/05/theme-plot-integration-part-8-use-of-co.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/05/theme-plot-integration-part-9-use-of-co.html
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/05/index-to-theme-plot-integration.html

Remember, posts with "Integration" in the title put together the craft skills we've discussed singly in previous posts.

Also remember, most of this "work" is done subconsciously.  A writer telling a story wouldn't be consciously aware of doing any of this.  Those who do it as a "Talent" and get goshwows for their adroit use of these skills probably learned them just by reading eclectically, not necessarily thinking about what they were reading. 

Here's where we discussed Talent in writers:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/05/talent-mystique-or-mistake.html

Inborn, innate "Talent" is often signified in a natal chart by a quincunx or quindecile between outer and inner planets (fame is totally different).  We observe the results of Talent from outside the person by noting how "easily" they pick up certain skills (the child prodigy on the piano). 

Theory is that this ease of learning happens because the actual hard-slogging up the learning curve was done in a previous life, and the Soul selected that ability to be brought into this life.

Theory is that any "person" has a Soul with many-many Talents, and this person you are dealing with "now" has only a smattering of the Talents he/she has stored in their Soul.  Some of what a person has now is relevant to what they're doing in this life -- some not at all relevant. 

We "observe" the shapes of lives from the outside by reading biographies -- from the "inside" by reading autobiographies (at least the ones actually written by the person named), and by watching the people around us for the patterns we saw reading those books.

That's why a writer's best work is usually not done in their teens or twenties.  It takes many years to read enough and observe enough people to perceive the patterns scattered deeds and events create.

As you read the rest of this series of Theme-Plot Integration posts, think about an ant crawling  up one of those huge, hanging tapestries you've seen in museums, the kind women used to make to hang in drafty castles. 

You sit on a bench ten feet away or more, and gaze upon the picture with all the different, entwined figures cavorting in different settings.  You see a lot of different scenes from one side of the tapestry to another.  Then you think about the scenes and you see an entire story of a Historical Event (such as a war) or perhaps the mythological gods and goddesses whose stories carried the philosophy of that Age.

But what does that ant see?  The ant doesn't have a human eye, or a human brain.  The ant may pick up strands from the colored threads, not discerning the color differences, just that the strand supports its little feet. 

If the ant were an Artist, it would infer the pattern and run back to the next and try to explain that pattern to other ants. 

We are ants trying to discern the pattern of our lives.  (yes, I know the answer is 42.) 

That underlying PATTERN is what Art reveals.  That pattern is what writers study.

A writer will go to the mall and people-watch, just as actors do.  Just sit and watch people juggle packages and kids and scramble from store to store -- think about "who" those people are and where they are inside one of those PATTERNS.

Finding a pattern in random dots is what artists do for a hobby.  For a living, artists SHOW YOU the pattern they see. 

The most commercial story-form today is the Novel.  It has developed over more than a century and diversified at various periods into a variety of genres. 

The commercial Novel is a very specific type of Work - it is a story with very specific shapes.  Academics like the word "trope" to describe such shapes.  Those who burn with a desire to shatter the art world as they see it often refer to a trope as a "formula." 

The worse opprobrium cast upon the most highly commercial fiction is the term "formulaic."

Once a formula or trope has become well enough known to a consuming market to be identified as "formulaic,"  that particular shape is on its way out of the commercial fiction arena. 

Since we live our everyday lives amidst a turbulent sea of unrelated, even random, dots of information, Events, and tasks, we love to relax with a nice, predictable STORY we can trust to deliver as expected.

But since we live amidst those random dots, and can't see what patterns Artists see  amidst the random, we just plain don't believe fiction that we can see "through" -- that we can see a pattern in, that we can see the formula behind.

So writers spend a lot of time disguising the bare bones behind their stories, the "plot."

Just as Hollywood producers want "the same but different" so also editors want "the same but different" because viewers/readers want "the same but different."

Fiction consumers want that predictable formula, but they don't want to be able to SEE it. 

If your reader can see the bones, the formula, the PLOT, the story is not plausible.  But if your reader can find no bones, no formula, no PLOT, the story is not plausible.

In other words, there has to BE a plot, and it must be something resembling the "plots" that subsume the everyday reality of the consumer's world, but your plot has to be as invisible as the plot of your reader's real life is.

How do you make a plot, a pattern you've striven to discern in reality for years and years, into something invisible underlying your story?

You cloak your Plot in the flesh of Theme.

Just as no two human beings look identical, but all have bones, no two stories look identical but they all have a plot.

The essence of all those plots is conflict.

All novel type stories are the story of a conflict that is resolved.

And the same is true of a series of novels (or a TV Series).  Here is a conflict.  Here's how it got resolved.  Here's the resolution. 

That's the bones, the plot, the part which, if it somehow sticks out of flesh that's too lean, will disappoint or disgust readers who need the mixed-mashup of random dots that they see in real life around them. 

So let's look at the three novel series we're studying.

In Part 9 we ended up with theme sketches:

-------quote--------
Corine Solomon is in love with a guy whose Talent is "Luck."  That has a whole backstory having to do with his parentage, but the point is that Talent and Luck (co-incidence) drives the plot of all 5 of the Corine Solomon novels.

(Alien Series) Kitty-Kat has a Talent for organizing other Talents, for leading a group of talented warriors while Luck sweeps her through personal combat, chase scenes and armed combat.  She remembers what's worked before and uses it to good effect again.  But her real Talent is for asking Question -- yes, capital Q questions, such as Kirk's "What does God need a spaceship for?"  Those are the obvious questions nobody else ever thinks of because people rely on assumptions they haven't tested when trying to solve a problem.

Sten has a Talent for surviving.  He learns the Art of War, but it isn't inherent in him.  He finally grows up enough that all he wants is to stay out of combat situations.  But he's living a Destiny, so the harder he tries to avoid combat, the worse the combat gets.  His Talent doesn't help him get out of his Destiny, which he can't even see coming -- any more than you can see a tornado coming until it's too late.

Perhaps the overall theme of the Sten Series is that forging the path to your destiny must inevitably affect, deflect, or inflect the paths of others toward their destinies. 

--------end quote--------

The Corine Solomon novels by Ann Aguirre are action/romance with paranormal dimensions added.  They are essentially Romance, with a main character (Corine) who starts out striving for independence and loving being independent -- but galled by the boyfriend she is separated from.

The PLOT is basically, an Independent Woman perfectly satisfied with being independent, pursuant to her own code of Honor, helps those who help her.  In so doing, she rescues her boyfriend from (literally) beyond Death and marries him. 

They separated basically over his Luck -- terrible trouble would strike, followed by harrowing, heart-stopping adventure, narrow misses, and escape.  It was a life-pattern she couldn't stand and he couldn't stand inflicting on her.  She, too, has a paranormal talent - she can touch an object and read it's history.  She applies that Talent to earn a living in antiques.  But then she gets mixed up in (by "sheer co-incidence") Mexican gangland wars, and the harder she tries the worse it gets (by ever more improbable co-incidences).  Co-incidence, happenstance, and luck drive the problems into her path.  She solves those problems by repeated applications of "doing the right thing regardless of the odds" and (by co-incidence) Wins (temporarily.) 

Corine is a problem-solver by nature, and views each of the disasters that befalls her as a problem to be solved.  At the end of the final book,  Agave Kiss, she rescues her boyfriend/lover from beyond Death (he's a half-breed son of a god, so when he dies his father tries to make him into a working god).  This is an application of the plot-bones of mythical stories -- they always work in fiction.  And in the process she gives up her original Talent, so now she can't read objects.  He proposes in a romantic setting smacking of the opening sequences. 

In the final Corine Solomon novel, the author Ann Aguirre (on twitter https://twitter.com/MsAnnAguirre  )  mentions that she didn't think her editor had confidence in her ability to bring the series to the Happily Ever After (HEA) ending required for the "trope" or formula, but here it is and it is an HEA.  Yes, indeed it is exactly that.  Corine Solomon got what she wanted (even needed) even though she didn't know in the beginning of the series that this was what she had to have. 

Because of the paranormal dimensions involved in the worldbuilding, the Corine Solomon Novels are a good example of how to use co-incidence in plotting and produce something other-worldly that resembles our everyday lives. 

The ALIEN SERIES by Gini Koch is a bit more than a Romance. 

The 7th Alien Series novel comes out this month, May 2013, and Gini says on twitter (  http://twitter.com/GiniKoch ) she has contracts through book 11 with plans for more beyond that.  So it's hard to sum up right now, but let's try.

It doesn't END with the marriage to an Alien, but goes on to challenge that marriage, beget a child, and change the world that child will grow up within (with the infant's Talents helping). 

In that, it resembles the Sten Series more closely than it does the Corine Solomon series.  The two series are about an existing "order of things" that is challenged by introduction of a New Element, with the resulting instability resolved by a Hero (Kitty Kat or Sten) who "does the right thing regardless" just as Corine Solomon does. 

The setting for the Alien Series is Earth plus one other Planetary System inhabited by Aliens, and a backdrop of a galaxy out there somewhere (filled with threats). 

The Plot of the Alien Series might be stated as "Woman who thinks she's an ordinary human who doesn't believe in co-incidence just by co-incidence walks into a battle between Aliens resident on Earth and Aliens inimical to the well-being of Earth, and completely by "accident" wins the battle and the undying love of one of the Aliens resident on Earth.  She keeps on doing the right thing, which includes fixing up the world to be hospitable for her child." 

Kitty Kat's Talent for asking the obscurely obvious Questions is a result of her disbelief in co-incidence.  She keeps trying to connect the dots of her life into a Pattern, absolutely sure there is a pattern there somewhere.  And she keeps finding those patterns where nobody else can find them.  She acts on the pattern she sees, and "co-incidence" and "luck" pursue her.

A theme can be discerned by connecting those bits of co-incidence.  Let's look at the Sten Series.  There are 8 novels extant, and on the fanfiction blog-post (once a year, on Empire Day) Allan Cole has posted a possible opening chapter for Book 9. 

http://stencole.blogspot.com/2013/03/sten-9-return-of-sten.html

STEN starts with a young boy, child of indentured servants (slaves really) on a high-tech manufacturing Space Station.  He sees the life his parents live (and die in) and where the kids of other parents likewise indentured live, and every cell in his body says NO! 

Sten defects, fights the system, grows to maturity as a "rat in the walls" of the Station, fighting every step of the way.  Eventually, the station is invaded by representatives of The Eternal Emperor, and Sten "is rescued" because of his fighting prowess -- and sheerest, dumbest, purebred and insane LUCK.  Absolute co-incidence changes his life as he participates (using his hard-won skills as a wall-rat) in the combat between the Station owner and the Emperor's Representative (very similar to the kickoff Event of the Alien Novels). 

The writing rule is that you can use CO-INCIDENCE to kick off a plot, to start a story, -- happenstance and accident (i.e. Uranus transits) often change our life-direction so it's plausible that trouble comes via co-incidence, because that's generally how it seems to us in our "reality."

But from a writer's point of view, it isn't random dots.  Co-incidences and accidents "happen" because of some inherent, intrinsic, basic, unknown-to-ourselves, trait we hold within our innermost psyche.  It is our Soul ramming through into external Reality, that "creates a stirring in The Force" -- that moves the currents of Time And Space -- that somehow effects the random Events like a magnet attracting filings, and brings "things" into our lives that disrupt existing patterns.

Consider the axiom: No Good Deed Goes Unpunished. 

That is a pithy saying, an adage, a bit of Wisdom of the Ages (has a basis in Kabbalah, as the Light of Good attracts the klippot for a perfectly Good reason), and it's more than irony or pessimism. 

Somehow, the sum total of all our generations observing "life" has distilled this bit of wit from random Events.  No Good Deed Goes Unpunished.

There is a relationship between what you DO and what HAPPENS TO YOU, but it is not cause/effect.  There's no way to game the system, or bribe G-d. 

You could say (theme is a philosophy) that no bad deed goes unrewarded. 

There are tons of self-help books about Why Good Things Happen To Bad People, or vice-versa.

It's not "cause/effect" which is the basis of all Science, but it's not Random either. 

There is a pattern -- some call it "poetic justice."  What goes around comes around.  As you sow; so shall  you reap. 

There's a reason the ancients developed the idea of "The Music of the Spheres."  The universe we live in can be described by mathematics, and so can music.  Poetry and music thrum within us all, so when we see a plot "come full circle" as songs and poems do, finishing what was started on the same "note" -- we feel satisfied, vindicated, safe in our comprehension of our reality. 

Ancient Greek and Roman fiction is filled with tales of Destiny, Fate, mighty Heroes fighting with their gods (mostly losing in the end).  Those civilizations were based on "you can't win" but our civilization is based on David and Goliath, and "The Bigger They Are The Harder They Fall."  We champion the Little Guy, and the Little Guy wins -- that's poetic justice to us.

Sten is a Little Guy who at first gives his innocent loyalty to The Eternal Emperor, finally gets to meet the Emperor in person and see him as a rather ordinary seeming Being, smart but not infallible. 

In the typical Uranus transit, we assert ourselves, our most true-to-self core identity comes roaring out into the world with massive amounts of built up energy behind it.  (here's an index to posts on Astrology Just For Writers)

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/03/pausing-for-you-to-catch-up-with-me_30.html

So Sten's desire for freedom comes exploding out of him when the oppressive Establishment that basically consumed his parents, is under attack by a larger, unseen and not-understood by him, authority.  Using all the skills and tools he's developed over years, he gets himself caught up in a CONFLICT between the Emperor and one of the Emperor's (apparently) Loyal Subjects -- between the Emperor and the corruption that the Emperor's governing style allows to suppurate. 

That corruption (the indentured servitude thing) has shaped Sten's personality, drive, ambition and view of reality, as well as his Values.  He has a lot to learn, but what he learned before his rescue is what eventually generates his ultimate response to the Emperor's behavior. 

Having been rescued, he willingly gives his loyalty to The Emperor (well, The Empire), and becomes a soldier, then a member of an Elite Service.  He climbs the ladder to high command and even to Ambassador speaking for the Emperor -- but by that time, it's a very changed Emperor. 

Sten grew up rejecting the oppressive regime of a slaver, and now discovers -- very slowly over the millennia, the Eternal Emperor has slowly been deteriorating.  The current reincarnation of the Emperor is not the man Sten first met -- this one is insane, a mad dictator worse than the slaver who killed Sten's parents.

This Empire sprawls over so many galaxies, is peopled by so many Beings, that the picture Sten must find amidst the random dots is very blurry.  Remember that ant crawling on the tapestry we mentioned above?  That's Sten -- trying to understand The Empire, and what has happened to The Eternal Emperor -- and why it's all gone bad.

Sten's path from wall-rat to Emperor's Nemesis appears, point by point, assignment by assignment, to be a Random Walk -- a path of co-incidence, chance, and luck.

And in so appearing, that path states the overall theme of the Sten Series.

What is that theme?  Well, I don't know and I doubt even the authors Chris Bunch and Allan Cole, actually know for sure.  I think though, that Allan Cole has a very good idea of what it is saying.

As I see Sten's Path -- it says that we all bear the seeds of our destruction within us.  We scatter those seeds and sometimes it takes so long for our seeds to germinate, grow, and bear fruit that comes hunting us that we don't recognize our destruction when it comes back at us.  But it comes from within.

That is not a theme unique to The Sten Series; rather it is a technique all great writers use to replicate in fiction the pattern of life we observe from our eyes, (as the ant on the tapestry.)

The deep subconscious conflicts within your main character generate the Plot Events outside that character, the Events that cause him Joy and Sorrow, Elation and Grief. 

The antagonist, the Nemesis, of a character is the reflection of the character's deepest unconscious.

Sten's unconscious was "programmed" because of his origin as a slave's child, to need to destroy Authority. 

He fought to free himself of oppression (mid-series he "retires" to an idyllic world he has earned enough to buy, and nearly goes crazy because there's no oppression to fight any more), and gave himself to a bigger, more elaborately disguised by random-dots oppressor, the Eternal Emperor.

All along the path, Sten fought to free others of oppression, to serve freedom, to make the Empire a better place, and so his skills (gained as a wall-rat) generated miraculous wins that catapulted him on a meteoric rise to the Emperor's good graces.

But the velocity of that rise (the sheer Uranus/Aquarius Power for Freedom), made him an Individual (Uranus) to the Emperor -- and that velocity itself could only be seen as a threat to the Emperor who had lost his own sense of Individuality, his own sense of uniqueness (Uranus). 

Uranus rules accidents.  And individuality.  And Aquarius -- The Age of Aquarius. 

And this is where the themes of the Corine Solomon novels, the Alien novels, and the Sten novels resonate harmoniously, different instruments in the same orchestra playing the same symphony.  Art. 

Corine Solomon is Fantasy, the Alien novels blend Fantasy and Science Fiction, and Sten is just Science Fiction.  Yet they're all made of the same thematic stuff.

We might term that stuff Co-incidence, or Luck, or Destiny. 

The heroic plot is crafted from the thematic substance of how the Individual projects the Self onto the substance of reality, crafts the world in which he lives.

The exterior World you build around your character to cradle them and display them (as a jeweler displays a diamond on black velvet) is molded from the subconscious of your character.

Whether that truly reflects how our real world works, how life works, or not, is irrelevant to the Art underlying story-craft.  It is how we SEE the lives people around us live.

We see people get their comeuppance -- oh, not right away, to be sure, but get it they do.

But we don't see what happens to ourselves as our own comeuppance.  At least, not the first few times it happens. 

Maturity might be defined as the ability to see how you deserve what happens to you, so that when something you don't deserve happens to you, you know for sure that you didn't deserve it.

In that clarity of knowing the difference between what he deserves and does not deserve, in his maturity, Sten decides he must take down the Eternal Emperor.  This Destiny has chosen him. 

And so Sten turns and stops running from the bald fact that the Emperor is now no different from the owner of the slave-factory space station where he grew up.  And Sten takes him down. 

The Sten Series is not a Romance with an inevitable and obvious Happily Ever After.  It's not about finding a Soul Mate -- it's about first finding the Freedom (Uranus) from tyranny (Saturn) that will allow Sten to be able to notice and identify his Soul Mate. 

The Corine Solomon Series, the Alien Series, and the Sten Series all have that one Plot element in common, Co-incidence that is NOT REALLY CO-INCIDENTAL.

The co-incidences and luck that beset the Main Character arises from the Main Character's own character, mostly subconscious. 

Their world arranges itself to challenge them to grow and mature into someone who can surmount one final challenge and achieve an objective. 

Originally a Hero was a half-god/half-human Being who could do things normal humans can't (Hercules), but who shared human foibles, faults and were subject to the whims of the gods.  They usually fought the gods and their destiny.

Today a Hero is a human who comes to do something he/she couldn't do before - who matures into a more powerful Being by meeting challenges to their weakest spots.

Very often they die during this process.  But sometimes they survive maimed, with new challenges to overcome. 

These 20 novels are stories of how a Hero matures.  The theme they share is that of co-incidence arising apparently in response to a Hero's actions/feelings/movement.  The plots are crafted from how the Hero creates co-incidences-to-order without having a clue that they're doing that.

These 20 novels are extremely hard to analyze for a distinction between Theme and Plot because the themes and the plots are fully integrated.  Only the author can know, and usually it's better that they don't know. 

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Talent: Mystique Or Mistake

George Burns Photo From Wikipedia

I saw a comment on Twitter about writing TALENT that I just have to discuss here because Talent is such a big issue when you're contemplating "becoming" a writer. 
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Before we start on that, I have to point out that this week the Vampire anthology I edited (but did not contribute a story to) is just now available on Amazon etc, and it contains stories by 9 authors who would all be labeled "Talented" by most observers.  I didn't select these stories because the writers are "Talented," and I doubt any editor would choose stories for an anthology on that basis.  



----

So this comment I found on Twitter could be paraphrased: "I hope someday someone will recognize my Talent as a writer."

The comment made me very sad, but it reminded me we hadn't discussed Talent here at all.  In fact, I'm not sure I've used that word in these writing discussions.

That's because I don't "believe in" Talent as necessary to being a professional artist, actor, writer, wordsmith, dreamspinner, whatever you call what we do in writing Romance stories.  

I don't believe a lack of Talent is a barrier to achieving anything, in the Arts, Sciences, or anywhere.  In fact, you'll do better without Talent than with it.

When I was in 4th grade or so, there was an English assignment to write a "Tall Story" after we'd studied Paul Bunyan and related stories. 

I immediately grasped the concept of the Tall Story.  It seemed way beyond the conceptual ability of the rest of the class (in my school, a class was about 50 students and 1 teacher, which I consider an ideal ratio probably because I got used to it young.)

Now this was long before I became steeped in Science Fiction, and may have been the reason my mother introduced me to Science Fiction when I was in 5th grade, but she never said so.  I basically invented the entire field of science fiction, whole cloth out of nothing except kid-lit about talking animals etc.  I'd never heard of science fiction at that time, and Adult Fantasy didn't exist as a field.  So I made it up for a Tall Story. 

I don't remember much about that first story I ever wrote.  This is pretty much before I actually learned to READ which was in 5th grade after my mother brought me SF novels from the adult library when I was home sick.  I do remember I wrote about a guy who lived all alone in a cabin on the side of a craggy, rocky mountain overlooking a huge gorge (I can still see the image in my mind.)  I lived at that time in a totally flat town with a couple of small hills in the distance.  I'd never seen any place that looked like the setting for this story.  I don't remember the character I invented or what he did except it was "impossible" and involved affecting something on the other side of the gorge.  Yes, it was about a guy not a gal.  I had no idea of plot or story structure.  The assignment was to think of a Tall Story - something impossible that nobody else could imagine could be true. 

That's exactly what I did.  And everyone was astonished (except the rest of the class of course; they were just confused).  My teacher and my parents said I was Talented.  I didn't have a clue what "Talent" meant but it seemed to me it pleased them, which was a rare experience for me so it made an impression.

I was in 10th grade before I actually committed myself to a lifetime career as a writer of science fiction, do or die trying. 

Even by then, I had no clue what Talent was but I had ascertained by experiment and experience that I had NONE other than the ability to imagine the inconceivable as if it were commonplace reality.  I just didn't live in the same "world" other people around me lived in, but most people wouldn't call that a Talent.  More like a handicap?  

Long after I finished college, I did discover what Talent is and that I do have some, just not for art or writing stories or anything I really wanted to do. 

In between, I was increasingly puzzled by what people mean by the word Talent, and more and more determined to find out what Talent is, where it comes from, why it exists, and whether or why it matters at all.

The prevailing culture we live in is as obsessed with Talent as I am with the meaning of Words.  I love words.  I love how they feel in my mouth, especially words in a foreign language.  I love languages, especially those that are not cognate with English, my native language. 

I love gnawing at the puzzle of how the mind works, how humans use symbols like words, how ideas are generated and communicated with words, binding generations together so that we truly do "stand on the shoulders of giants." 

I love ideas, and how they interweave and turn around each other, forming dimensional pictures in the mind.  I love the research involved in relating the mind and the brain.  I love this world and the people who live in it, bewildered and happy at the same time.  Falling in love is what life is all about.  The things you do when in a mental/emotional state of that kind of love/joy/happiness/delight succeed no matter the barriers that seem to be in the way, no matter the lack of Talent or Skill.  Love does indeed conquer All. 

So, after my mother introduced me to science fiction, and I found science fiction fandom (or rather it found me: I wrote a letter to an SF Magazine that was published with my address and my mailbox exploded with letters from fellow-fans) I set out to launch myself into a profession as a writer, and knew I needed a strategy.

At that time, I didn't know that Love Conquers All, I just knew that nothing on earth was going to stop me no matter what. 

So I started my research by reading a lot of biographies of writers, famous and otherwise, (and autobiographies, too), which led to reading a lot of history and non-fiction travel books (I read everything on parapsychology and UFOs in the library even though I had to sneak into the stacks and sit there to do it being too young to borrow those adult books).  My attitudes towards words and language, and a host of other subjects like drama and philosophy, all painted a picture of a writer.  I learned that I had everything needed for a career in writing except Talent (but who cares, I will not be stopped!)  One thing all successful writers had in common was Travel -- and I hadn't done much of that. 

Talent, I thought, was something I'd have to do without, but Travel -- that lack I could remedy.

I loved to travel.  My Dad took us on a vacation every year to interesting places, and I loved riding in the car staring out the window, stopping and meeting people who lived in different places.  Eventually I learned to love driving the Interstates.  By the time I got out of college, I was able to drive across country (coast to coast) and stop and drive around towns without a map (pre-GPS), though years later I had to rely on maps because they kept building roads.  With a map, I could go anywhere.

But I'd never been farther out of this country than across the Mexican border to a border town (places you wouldn't go wander around in by yourself today).  So when I got out of college, I got a job in Israel and lived there for a couple of years -- language, travel, adventure became my middle name. 

I had determined that I was a science fiction writer -- though I hadn't written anything except a couple of novels when I was in college, and some worldbuilding exercises when I was in 7th-10th grade. 

I invented worlds and  characters incessantly (another signature habit of the pre-writer).  I wrote a lot of long-long (20 page) letters to pen pals in foreign countries.  I wrote a lot of letters to other science fiction fans, and articles for fanzines (on paper), and that letter-to-the-editor that was my first print publication.  I chained a lot of words together, but never actually did any of the things I've been discussing in these blog posts as the essence of the writing craft until after I was married and raising kids.

I realize now that I was educating myself in the craft by churning out millions of words.  When I had decided to commit my life to the profession of writing, my Aunt gave me a subscription to Writer Magazine, and I went to the library and borrowed (systematically) all the previous issues they had in archive (kids weren't supposed to be able to do that - I had to get my Mom's permission.) 

I came to understand that I have no talent for writing at all.  But I also learned you don't need talent to do a better job at anything than those who have talent.  In fact, having no talent for something is a prime credential for doing that thing at the world-class level. 

I learned that TALENT is the word we use to refer to something that's born into a person.  If you have a talent for something then when you first encounter it, you can do it easily, almost without effort, and with very little actual instruction, and ridiculously few failures.  

You've read biographies of child prodigies who can play Mozart by age 8, or whiz through college math courses before they're 12.  That's talent.

It's like your computer that comes with programs pre-installed.  When you boot it up the first time, you click a few things, type in your name and whatever, and presto the program is running.  You didn't have to shop for it, put a disk in the drive, coax it to load the install program, fight with it.  It just works.

That's talent -- a set of skills pre-installed.  One encounter and presto, the skills are booted and ready to use. 

Some kids can play tennis after being shown how to hold a racket.  Some can learn Ballet at professional levels after some basic exercises to stretch and strengthen muscles, and then being shown how to move to a rhythm.  Something inside goes CLICK and then they can do it, and do it perfectly. 

Some are like that with a violin, and after going through 3 local teachers, they get sent to Juliard at age 14 and pushed to Carnegie Hall.

Not me! 

Not only did I come with no pre-installed writing/storycraft skills, but the talents I do have are irrelevant to learning those skills.

Here's what I learned about Talent that makes the whole thing clear.

Study of Astrology reveals sets of aspects in a natal chart that manifest as what most people call or recognize as Talent. 

Here's the list of Astrology Just for Writers posts I've done on this blog which may mention Talent.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/03/pausing-for-you-to-catch-up-with-me_30.html  (parts 1-9)

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2011/08/astrology-just-for-writers-part-10.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2011/11/astrology-just-for-writers-part-11.html

The theory of reincarnation when combined with Astrology indicates that these Talents you see in natal charts are the skills and abilities acquired in prior lives, or maybe bestowed before you're born. 

Well, what I learned is that THIS LIFE I'm living now is the "prior" life for my next life, (if I have one.)

What skills and abilities I acquire in this life will appear in my natal chart next time as Talent.  (Or maybe not, we'll see.) 

So if I work to acquire skills now, I may have them later when I need them.  Or maybe, like now, doing those things won't seem interesting to me, and I'll be off acquiring new Talents. 

I learned that this concept of what Talent is and where it comes from implies something even more profound.  You don't need TALENT!!! It's excess baggage.  And life is better if nobody knows you have it.

In Astrology, the 10th House Cusp is your vocation, your sacred calling, what you were born to do.  That mathematical point in the sky when you were born may not be involved in any of the Talent aspects in your chart, and thus you don't have a Talent for what you were born to do, but it's still your mission in life to do it.  Talents may be missions accomplished in prior lives, but not what this life is about -- or what this life is to prepare you for next time. 

You don't have to be talented to accomplish things.  In fact, the most successful people aren't talented at what they are successful at.  (Madonna comes to mind.)  Those who are talented at something (golf, acting, surfboarding, football) have enormous success very early in life (because what they're doing is altogether too easy for them), skyrocket to the top of their profession, then crash and burn in mid-life, rarely living to old age and seeing great-grandchildren through college.  (Michael Jackson comes to mind.) 

Others, like say George Burns for example, doggedly gain skills and advance in their profession, adding dimensions as they go along, and live to a hundred before they star in the definitive movie of a lifetime (he played God in "Oh, God!"
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0076489/combined


He and Gracie Allen had a long, massively successful career always adding skills as they went from medium to medium.  Here's another photo from Wikipedia
ttp://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/e/ee/Burns&Allen1938.jpg/220px-Burns&Allen1938.jpg