sroni | Snowflake Challenge, Day 8

Day 8

In your own space, talk about a talent (or talents) you have. Everyone's got something they're good at. Leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.

Well, I do consider myself to be talented at writing. "To be successful at something subjective, you have to have talent, be disciplined to work hard, and be passionate about it. Passion and discipline can overcome a lack of talent, but talent and passion can't overcome the lack of discipline to the same extent. You really need all three, though." I've said that about writing, but it applies to music, drama, etc. I love writing. I love writing. And I am damn good at it. Yeah, sometimes I get a little lazy. But I'm good, and here's the thing: I'm still getting better, because I practice, I read, and I pay attention to the feedback that I get.

On a related note, I'm also really good at critiquing on one of my RP sites. So far, even though I've only been active as a Staffer for a grand total of four months, I am the most requested grader, and each grade a Staff member does is worth a certain amount of Game Points: 25 for a basic grade, 50 for a basic critique, 100 for an in-depth critique. 100 is supposed to be the cap. You're not supposed to be able ot get more than that. I periodically get my 100 GP cap per grade bumped up to 150 or 200 by the Second-in-Charge. I'm good at critiquing. I take the pieces line by line, if necessary, and explain why something did work or didn't work, and why that's so. I explain that it did work, but could have been better if _____, and why. I explain the rules of writing, and yes, sometimes it's something idiotically simple like, "The beginnings of sentences are capitalized. Proper nouns are capitalized. Please remember to do this. Also remember that any other words are not going to be capitalized, and capitalizing random letters doesn't make you look cool, it simply makes people want to hit you". I've had to teach people punctuation and that commas are, in fact, necessary. But when a lot of the Staffers have lost patience with a particular member, I'm the one who is still able to explain things rationally to him, and because I've stated that he's better than what he's producing right now, he likes me and listens to me, and because he's listening to me, he's actually improving.

Performing. I'm really good at this. Part of it is with drama, I have a freak memory. I've been handed a twenty page two person script, and half an hour later, I was ready to run lines. A) I read things very quickly, and B) I read something once, and it's already mostly commited to memory. I read it a second time, and it's more solid. A third time, and it's there. After that, I just need to get off paper and start running lines as much as possible, because otherwise, I'll just memorize what the page looks like, and that's not what you want when you're trying to have character thoughts come out of your eyes. Music, I love harmonizing more than anything else. I can't remember not knowing how to harmonize. I'm a natural soprano (my friend and I were listening to her "Phantom of the Opera" cd, and on the song "Think of Me", she took Christine's part, and I harmonized with her on a higher part), but have the range for alto, and I can hear and hold a part, so I wind up singing whatever part gets tossed at me. In one performance, I wound up singing phrases in soprano, alto, and tenor, jumping from one part to the other because those were the trouble spots, and the choir director knew they could count on me to "lead the way".

Rotary phones. I can use one.