November, 2025
Well, it’s been a while. I hope you’re all staying safe and well!
I’ve been doing Walk Fitness with the coach, and I’ve written a novella (I don’t know yet where or when it will be published, but it’s written!). I did copyedits on the latest novel—which I know I mentioned on Bluesky and Tumblr, but how about an announcement here?
If you don’t feel like clicking the link—the novel is called Radiant Star, it’s set in the universe of the Imperial Radch, and it comes out in May! Pre-order it wherever find books are…pre-ordered.
I’ve also been taking pottery classes!
I’ve really enjoyed throwing on the wheel. For the most part I make spectacular messes, but sometimes I get a usable (if awkward) dish out of it. If you’ve ever thought it might be cool to do pottery, and there’s a class available near you, you should totally try it!
Throwing on the wheel has given me a new appreciation for dishes generally, and recently I remembered the part of Lloyd Alexander’s Taran Wanderer where he spends time with the master potter Annlaw Clay-shaper. I don’t know if you’ve read the Chronicles of Prydain (you should give them a look if you haven’t) but in Taran Wanderer, Taran, the main character, basically tries out several occupations on his quest to find out who he is.
And—spoiler!—he tries blacksmithing, and weaving cloaks, and other things, and discovers that he’s pretty good at all of them! But none of them is what he really wants to do.
But pottery, now. He loves pottery. It’s what he wants to do more than anything else. So he applies himself to learn it. But after a while he and Annlaw both conclude that he doesn’t actually have what it takes to be anything more than more or less competent at it. But Taran wants to be an artist, a great potter, like Annlaw himself. And so he sadly, bitterly, gives up pottery.
Now, when I was a kid this was quite poignant to me, and I think it’s meant to be poignant. I understood Taran’s desire to be Really Good, to be an Artist, and his frustration at not being able to be that.
These days, though—with clay all over my hands and my collection of wonky, mostly bottom-heavy mugs, I see that chapter very differently, and find that I strongly disagree with not just the specifics of the chapter but also what Alexander was trying to say.
The thing is, you can dive headfirst into pottery and eat and drink it for months and there won’t be any predicting how good or bad you’ll be at it in the long run. It’s true that some people will go farther than others, some people will progress faster than others. But in the end, if you’re putting the work in, you’ll get better at what you’re doing. As a friend of mine says, “You don’t get worse at something you do every day.”
So the question is not, does Taran have the talent to be a great potter. The question is, how much work will it take to be the potter he wants to be, and is he willing and able to do that work?
In the book, Taran is willing to put in whatever work is required, but Annlaw tells him that he doesn’t have the talent. And Taran takes him at his word. And that’s…that’s just wrong. So often there’s a point in learning anything where you feel like you just aren’t ever going to get it, and that’s not the moment for your teacher to tell you you’re right about that!
I would also argue about the worth of being “merely competent” as a potter. And there’s an entire argument about what “art” is and what “greatness” is and I’m not going to get into all that, but, well, I’ve just been thinking about how much work it takes to be even “merely competent” at throwing pots, and just how long it would have to take Taran to get even to that point. (Not the weeks or months implied in the book, I’m quite sure. It could take years.)
All this is to say, when I was a kid I read Taran Wanderer as (partly) a story about someone who was good at a lot of things he didn’t particularly want to do, but wasn’t good at the one thing he did want to do. These days, I see that part of the book as a story about someone who met a lot of good teachers, who taught him interesting skills, but when he finally found a skill he really wanted, the teacher was lacking.
Look, everything worth doing is difficult. It all takes work. Talent exists—some people, as I said, will go farther and faster than others. But there’s no predicting how far anyone in particular can go. There’s no point wondering if you have a talent for something. If you want to write, or make music, or whatever—show up. Practice. Make things. You don’t get worse at something you do every day. Or even every week or every month, or whatever schedule works for you.
What I’ve been reading:
Well, I’ve been reading a lot of detective stories. But things I’ve read recently that aren’t detective stories include
Notes from a Regicide, by Isaac Fellman
This is just really good. I read it because I heard Wizards vs Lesbians talk about it and it sounded interesting, and it absolutely was.
and
Time to Orbit: Unknown by Derin Edala
This is actually two books—The Javelin Program and The Antarctica Conspiracy. In some ways these books feel a little fanficcy (affectionate) to me, but they are not fanfic. I found both books to be enjoyable, compulsive reading.
Anyway, that’s what I’ve got for this month. Take care!
Ann
I agree with you about Taran. Conceiving of human ability as a matter of (inborn) talent instead of (learned) skill is both lazy and harmful.
Shotokan karate instructor Elmar Schmeisser has a great quote about intermediate students getting to the point where their ability to identify their mistakes far outstrips their ability to correct them. He says it's like carving a cube into a sphere; the first few cuts are easy, but every corner you remove generates a bunch of new corners. Although to an outsider you may look like you've got a pretty good sphere going, all you can see is corners! He identifies this as a crucial time for the instructor to encourage perseverance.
My father, a highly effective choral music teacher, didn't have much use for the notion that some people can just sing and some can't; for years he taught in a school system where choir was mandatory for all the 6th graders, and he almost never ran into anyone who couldn't successfully learn to sightread in a year. After the one mandatory year, most of his students signed up for choir year after year, and many became music teachers themselves. Those students are in their 70s now and they still have choir reunions.