Talent, or ability, by itself, is overrated. So is pure intelligence. Over the years, I have seen so many people with great talents, and others with incredible intellectual brilliance, fail, sometimes catastrophically, in a range of fields and occupations. I’ve seen executives who not only knew their market, their customers, and their products, but who could explain and sell, stall in dead-end positions. I’ve seen brilliant attorneys crash and burn, and literally destroy their lives and themselves. I’ve known talented writers who flamed out, never to be heard of again. I’ve met singers with incredible voices, good looks, and great stage presence who never even made the lowest rungs of an operatic career.

A failing I’ve seen far too often over the years is the tendency of people with great natural ability or intelligence to reach for “short-cuts” of various sorts. From what I’ve seen, the tendency to want to shortcut the path to success is, for some reason, highly linked to people with great natural abilities, almost as if they have the feeling that, because of their talents, they really don’t have to learn what other people do. That’s exactly why most of those who try the short-cut route fail… because the shortcutters don’t learn enough to handle the situations in which they find themselves as a result of their initial – and often short-lived – success in obtaining what they sought.

Yes, every once in a great while a short-cut succeeds, or someone reaches great heights in their field on pure ability, and little else – and manages to hold on, but the odds are a hundred to one against either.

Talent, ability, intellectual capability… these are absolutely necessary components of success, but in today’s highly competitive society, where almost half the work force in the United States possesses a college degree, and close to fifteen percent has a graduate degree, and in a world economy, those are far from enough to assure success in any field, let alone outstanding achievement.

As I’ve mentioned before, dependability is a vital necessity, as is a modicum of congeniality, or at least moderate sociability… and, of course, the understanding that, no matter what the field, there is always a certain amount of just plain hard work involved, often nit-picking drudgery. I started out as a low-level economist, long before computers provided neat and nifty analyses of numbers and statistical patterns. I had to calculate the statistics from raw data, and I learned a great deal about statistics and numbers. From what I’ve seen over the years, as computers can do more and more, most “analysts” seem to know less and less what the numbers and computer-generated statistics actually mean… and what they represent.

I’ve watched with amusement as politicians, executives, writers, and business people delegate more and more of that “drudgery” to computers, subordinates, or consultants, and then discover that somehow their position, success, power, are slowly slipping away.

While some delegation is necessary, especially the higher one gets in an organization, every delegation results in a greater removal from the world, and that reduces one’s understanding of that world.

There are no good short-cuts, only short-run expedient short-cuts with longer-term and higher costs.

Right now, I’m getting the very strong feeling that the U.S. economic system is running on what amounts to faith in magic. Every statistic I look at seems to be unsustainable… and most of those indicators have been at what traditionally seem to have been unsustainable levels for several years, whether it’s the various stock market indices, the price/earnings ratios of the vast majority of American companies, the ratio of various capital reserves to the debt levels they support, the plummeting velocity of money, the amount of government securities purchased by the Federal Reserve [although the official end of quantitative easing is as much a suggestion that continuing the QE program was unsustainable as it was that the economy has “recovered” enough that QE is no longer necessary]. The fact that the federal funds interest rate remains essentially at zero has meant that various bank deposits pay next to nothing in interest, which is likely the primary reason why stocks are priced at levels that would seem unrealistically high in almost any other situation.

What many people overlook is that U.S. financial policies combined with the high price of crude oil several years ago and the lack of decent returns on investment to make available billions of dollars for investment in new oil extraction technology, i.e., the combination of fracking and horizontal drilling, which in turn resulted in a temporary oversupply of oil. That led inevitably to the decline in the price of crude oil, and an on-going slow-down in the development of new oil wells. Because production levels of fracked wells drop off swiftly, so will world oil supplies, initially at the margin, but in a year or two oil prices may well begin to creep back.

Associated with all these magic numbers is the fact that a significant percentage of new and emerging companies are technically overvalued businesses which often command a premium in the marketplace, but hire comparatively few, if often high-paid, people. Valuing companies primarily on popular appeal, limited product/services, and the need to keep innovating in order to maintain marketplace appeal is another form of “magic.”

But what will support those jobs and valuations if the appeal dims or vanishes?

In the meantime, governments at all levels, and companies in the “infrastructure” business tend to be delaying or minimizing investment in highways, bridges, power plants, water systems, air navigation systems, and the like, all of which result in more jobs and more permanent assets.

But the politicians, especially the Republicans, are all for the “new” economics because it promises something for nothing… like magic.

I don’t watch much in the way of sports, especially professional sports, but I did watch the Super Bowl this past weekend, and I couldn’t help but come away with an observation…although most writers and probably many readers will likely cringe at the comparison I’m about to make. As writers, we’re in the same general business as professional sports. Our job is to entertain, and winning entertains far more than losing. In football, the score at the end of the game signifies who wins the game, but the box office receipts at the end of the season also determine who wins… as do the salaries and bonuses paid to players and, less substantially usually, to coaches.

In a sense, every player on an NFL team is a winner. They’re the professionals, and so long as they perform, they can keep playing and getting paid. In writing, the same thing is true. So long as a writer performs, he or she can keep keeping published and paid. And performing means not only writing books, but also writing them in a way that they sell enough that the publisher makes money – just as players have to perform well enough so that the team makes money.

Just as in football, in publishing there are mega-stars, and there are rookies, and journeyman authors. Every year, there’s a new group of writing stars, acclaimed by the writing pundits, and every year some of them sell enough books, and every year some don’t. And just as some football players seem to have all the talents and all the moves, but never quite make it in the big time, the same thing is true in writing fiction. And then there are the authors who never initially impress the literary pundits, just as there are players who never initially impress the football pundits, but who win, by selling hundreds of thousands or millions of books. But in this regard, football and writing differ. A writer can be an excellent writer and sell millions of books and never impress the literary pundits, whereas a football pundit who tries to sell his column by trashing players who perform outstandingly for a long time is likely to run into a substantial backlash. That doesn’t happen to literary pundits.

Another similarity between writing and professional football is that to be successful, a writer has to execute well and avoid mistakes, especially major mistakes, particularly at the end. If a writer blows the ending of a book, just as the Seahawks blew the ending of the Super Bowl, that book isn’t going anywhere… and if a writer does it too often, neither is the writer – just like a quarterback who throws interceptions at a critical time.

All the hype about style goes out the window if either a writer or a football player can’t execute and finish. Of course, style definitely helps, and if those in either profession can execute well, minimize mistakes, and finish on top in terms of their personal performance, that’s what makes them a professional.

And that’s an aspect of writing that’s all too often overlooked.

The word “barbarian” derives from the Greek “barbaros,” which originally meant someone who did not speak Greek, i.e., an outsider, and since then its derivations through Latin and French have come to take on the connotation of an outsider who is uncultured, indeed uncivilized. The modern concept of “civilization” in turn has its roots in the Roman “civitas,” the body of citizens united under the common law that bound them together, giving them responsibilities on the one hand and rights of citizenship on the other.

An accepted and shared law that lays out responsibilities and rights for citizens is not only the definition of civilization but also a practical requirement for any civilized culture to endure. But… in this sense culture and civilization are not synonymous. One can have a civilization of many cultures, or a single culture that is in no way a civilization.

The rise of the “modern barbarian” is the result, paradoxically, of technological advances and the massive human population growth that technology has engendered. Higher technology levels and greater population density combine so that every human being has the potential to create greater harm to every other human being, often in ways not considered by or known to the individual. In order to prevent or at least minimize this harm, civilizations pass laws, such as emissions standards on cars, where certain businesses can be located, how individuals and businesses must handle waste so that it doesn’t poison their neighbors or neighborhoods, safety standards for products, traffic laws… The list is long, but the laws have generally proved necessary because there are always individuals who believe it is “their right” to do what is not prohibited.

Then there are the “modern barbarians,” who reject any law or regulation that impedes their “right” to do what they think best, regardless of the impact on others. Some of these barbarians are individuals, and some are businesses and corporations, but whatever the type of barbarian, they all ignore the laws, or twist them – or flout them – so that they can continue practices that harm others in order to make money, gain power… if not both.

Maybe we should consider a different way of dealing with the severe lawbreakers, who break the compact, and “modern barbarians,” who break, bend, or ignore it. Since they don’t want to abide by the laws, perhaps we should remove all protections and privileges of civilization from them. You don’t want to follow the laws, then the laws won’t protect you… and no one will be prosecuted for shooting you, or dumping trash on your property. You won’t have to pay taxes, but you won’t get any benefits, no medical care unless you can pay cash for it, and you can’t drive on any road or highway because you aren’t paying for its construction and upkeep… and so on.

Such an approach would never fly… but it is a useful thought experiment. Not that any of the modern barbarians would understand. Nor would most liberals be anything but horrified, I suspect, at even the thought.

A recent Locus writers’ roundtable addressed the question of “the unpublished writer’s despair,” and from the discussion it appears that there is a lot of despair out there, most likely because there are a great number of writers who have not been successful, either in getting published or in self-publishing and not selling many books. And there are more than a few published authors who either have trouble getting published at present or in living on what they make from writing. And then there are the published writers deemed successful who still despair at times.

I found myself reacting to the discussion in a fashion that was most analogous to culture shock. It’s not as though I haven’t experienced a fair amount of rejection over the fifty years I’ve been writing or trying to write. As I’ve mentioned here and there, out of the more than one hundred short stories I wrote in my first years, something like six were ever published, and it took almost four years, after almost ten years of writing short stories, and rejections by a goodly number of publishers, after I finished my first novel before it finally found a publisher and was published.

It isn’t that I don’t feel and feel strongly about writing and what I write. Like many writers, I just don’t talk much about those feelings, except to my wife. Perhaps because I have a generally upbeat nature, despair doesn’t strike me often, and so far, not about writing matters. Now… anger… and absolute fury at some of the idiocy I’ve seen published, even though I fully understand that there is a large market for certain types of idiocy… those are another question.

In the whole business of getting published and continuing to get published, I try to be pragmatic. I know that when I write certain types of books, they’ll sell less well. It doesn’t mean I don’t write books that are difficult for some readers; I just space them out. But we as writers are in a profession, and that profession is intellectual entertainment. Some writers are more intellectual and less popularly entertaining, and some writers offer little more than spur-of-the-moment entertainment with minimal intellectual content. Add to that the fact that every reader has a somewhat different view of what is intellectual and what is entertaining, and it all makes writing a difficult profession for most who attempt it, and it’s scarcely surprising that most would-be writers fail to be successful.

What’s overlooked by too many writers, successful or unsuccessful, is that most who attempt a career in any field relying on a degree of popular appeal do in fact fail. Talented people fail. Even writers whom editors love for their style, technique, and stories have failed – miserably.

And I have failed in other occupations and endeavors, sometimes miserably. I was possibly the worst musician to ever lift a clarinet, and certainly one of the worst real estate salesmen in the state of Colorado, and was less than a rousing success in dealing with internal corporate politics. And, frankly, no one cared… or cares now. Nor did anyone really care for the ten years when I was fortunate to sell one short story a year… and I never expected that anyone would.

But no one is granted the “right” to be successful in anything, and success can vanish in a moment. I’ve seen it happen time and time again… and I live and write knowing that it could happen to me as it has to others [although I believe I work hard to avoid that]. All of which is why I find writerly “despair” a foreign country. I don’t find anger, discouragement, indignation, frustration, and consternation foreign… just despair. But maybe that’s because I’ve failed enough in other areas to know that it’s not the end of the world… and also because I’ve also seen how fickle popular taste can be, and how it often has little to do with the worth of what is criticized or rejected… and then, too, I’ve read enough unpublished manuscripts over the years to know that some unpublished writers should remain unpublished.

For understanding all that… and seeing the despair in other writers… I still find despair a foreign country…and one I hope never to inhabit.