Yes, Anyone Can Do It

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/what-makes-a-photographer-when-everyone-is-taking-pictures/

This.

If you were ever wondering about that question 'what makes you special' as an artist or writer it is this. Let me quote:

There are a lot of things that make a good photograph. You have to think about texture and gesture and composition, and all the things that painting has in it. Technology doesn’t change the way photography is. It just — it makes it available to more people, which means there’s going to be much, much more really terrible pictures taken or pictures that are totally dependent on subject, which is all, all right.

If you were there when the Hindenburg caught on fire, and you took a picture of it, that’s a great photograph. But you’re not a great photographer, because you can’t repeat that in everyday things.

What a great photographer does is, they are consistently able to make something in a style that’s personal to themselves. My pictures don’t depend on extreme sharpness. They depend on the composition and on the subject and on the way I see it.

Let me paraphrase this as a writer. There are a lot of things that make a great book, plot, voice, and pacing - just like a photograph or a painting, there are essential and universal qualities to a piece of writing where we can say, yes, this is a great book.

Technology does not change the nature of books or great writing, it just means the technology to write books is available to everyone, which means a truly staggering number of terrible books shall be written - but that is all right, and perfectly fine.

Everybody is free to try, and everybody starts somewhere. Show me a great writer and I will show you someone who started out by writing terrible books. There is nothing wrong with this.

Let's get to the central and most powerful idea, although those two preceding ones are great in their own rights. The fact there are pictures totally dependent on subject. Mr. Van Sickle gives the example of the Hindenburg, if you were there at that moment and captured that, then yes, that is a great photograph since you were the one who captured this first, or were the only person who did so at that moment in time.

Let's look at famous books, such as Fifty Shades of Grey, The Hunger Games, or even Harry Potter. Those were the firsts, and they created genres of writing which are like the "subjects" our photographer friend speaks of. Endless books covering these same subjects came out after these books were released, and most all of the books copying the first books in these genres seek to endlessly copy the subject matter of the original hit books.

What makes you special is not the subject matter.

Think about that.

Anyone can write a Fifty Shades knock off. Anyone. Just like anyone can point a camera at the Eiffel Tower and take a great photograph. Isn't that a great and worthy piece of art, just by the nature of its subject? But yet, billions of lousy pictures of the Eiffel Tower exist from the dawn of photography all the way to today, and for as far in the future as you can see. So what is the difference? I think Mr. Van Sickle says it best:

Your ability to consistently make something in a style personal to yourself.

That. It is not your subject matter that matters. It depends on the way you see things. It depends on how you express things. You ever wonder why these books come out, first in a subject, and then they do so well and everyone criticizes the writing or the tone and it is universally panned yet it does incredible sales? Why?

It is that picture of the Hindenburg. It is being at the right moment at the right time. Your skill as a photographer matters less than being at the right moment at the right time with the camera loaded or the book ready to go and pressing that button. Everyone and everything else after this magical moment shall be copying you. That is the power of the singualar moment and being able to recognize it.

But we are never guaranteed being the first, or being somewhere at a moment where the mere presence of being there or having the right book at the right time. So what makes us, as artists, special? What makes people come back to us, time and time again? It is not that we can repeat others, because everybody can do this. The technology makes it trivial.

What makes people come back to us is a vision, an ability to take any piece of subject matter and transform it into "a style personal to yourself" and share it with the world. If people react to that style, you connect. People come back. They seek not just one book of yours, but all of them. It takes something deep inside, an ability to look at something in this world and turn it into a unique creation where your personal style shines through.

Your personal style and ability to see and transform your thoughts into words is so much more important than your subject matter.

Technical skill matters. You can't go around writing books full of errors or taking photographs out of focus. You need to be able to deliver what's inside your head.

There is nothing more important than these two facts.

Subject matter is a secondary concern to an artist. To a commercial writer where you are doing genre fiction, of course, it is a primary concern.