Stephen King and craft

Stephen King's writing book is one of the best, though as you say, a lot of his advice is personal and applies only to people who write like Stephen King.

He's a Dickensian writer - there is quality in everything he writes, though not everything he writes is of the same quality. He's written some crap, but even when he is crapping out novels, he writes better than most.

The "classic King" novels of his coke-fiend days remain among my favorites. He's mellowed and become a more mature writer over time, and his more recent books are still good, but they don't quite have the deranged bugfuck quality that creeped me out as a teenager.

Laer Carroll said:

In reading we instinctively learn what a story is and how stories work. The more widely we read the more we learn and re-learn and re-re-relearn. Our subconscious is usually smarter and more flexible than our conscious minds.

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While this is true, it should not be overlooked that this most read and skillful writer did not quite acquire his skills by random reading. He was well educated first, which gave him a solid base on which to build on. He studied literature, which means he was well acquainted with some great works and had guidance as to what works and why, and how to put language to best use.
Of course some other people might acquire some insights by just reading novels and such, but schooling does present certain answers ready on a plate.

Amadan said:

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The "classic King" novels of his coke-fiend days remain among my favorites. He's mellowed and become a more mature writer over time, and his more recent books are still good, but they don't quite have the deranged bugfuck quality that creeped me out as a teenager.

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I was a teen snob and only discovered King as an adult, but view the division much the same way--from Salem's Lot to IT--titanic. From then on--totally not bad. (I add the 'burnout' tail end of the doped up period to the sober one, quality-wise)

This is precisely what Uncle Jim warns about from time to time--if you learn to write while dependent on some sort of crutch--once the crutch is gone (even if it's cigarettes)--this will show.

But "Dickensian" I would apply to Dean Koontz. King is more of the 19th century French-Russian type, adapted to Americana weird shit. He is Hugo and Dostoevsky. Koontz is Dickens.

And I will conclude this tangent about the two neck-to-neck horror giants by invoking a variation of the tortoise and the hare.

Doped up King made it with published book 1. Sober Koontz made it with published book 40. Yet while King "borrowed" a certain percentage of his initial level from his crutches, Koontz hammered his out by relentless toil, way, way slower. Slow and torturous, but once the perfect Koontz level was reached--around the exact year King blew his final ecstatic load--it remained up there forever, not dependent on pharmaceutical fluctuations.

So there we have the pros and cons of both approaches.

When I tried to read On Writing I thought that there was some pretty solid advice and interesting tidbits about King's personal life, but I put it down shortly after I got to the bit about how everyone can only improve so much. I distinctly remember him saying that those who are born okay writers can become good ones, but never great ones. This irked me, because while some people develop skills at a younger age than others or may have a inclination towards something, improvement isn't limited by natural talent. It struck me as a toxic mindset, and I've never been able to look at him the same way again, especially knowing that he'd once been an English teacher and had probably infected kids with this sort of thinking.

I do, however, agree with the read much, write much mentality. Every time that you put down or arrange words in some way, you improve your sense of how language is supposed to work and how to make your point clearly. That said, some forms of writing are more productive than others. No matter how many forum posts you write, your fiction will improve faster if you're writing fiction.

Ah yeah... "On Writing" is one of the best books on the craft that I've ever read. It was my bible while I was developing the techniques I use, and it's a good re-read every now and then. The core advice, the most useful advice of all, "pick a time of day, sit the hell down, and write every day until it becomes easy." So simple, so effective, so universal regardless of circumstances or background...I wouldn't get too upset about his remarks on good writers vs. great writers, L. Obrien. The difference between good and great is pretty much luck and time. A writer who's merely good in his lifetime might be considered great when another era hits, and the zeitgeist is more in line with his works and philosophies. Hell, use time travel to bring Shakespeare forward and I guarantee you he'd be stupefied that his plays are still around, much less considered high art.

L. OBrien said:

When I tried to read On Writing I thought that there was some pretty solid advice and interesting tidbits about King's personal life, but I put it down shortly after I got to the bit about how everyone can only improve so much. I distinctly remember him saying that those who are born okay writers can become good ones, but never great ones. This irked me, because while some people develop skills at a younger age than others or may have a inclination towards something, improvement isn't limited by natural talent. It struck me as a toxic mindset, and I've never been able to look at him the same way again, especially knowing that he'd once been an English teacher and had probably infected kids with this sort of thinking.

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Are you so sure he's wrong? There is nothing wrong with being merely good at something. We all know that anyone who tries hard enough can become a pretty good chess player or a pretty good basketball player or a pretty good piano player, but not everyone can become a grandmaster or a pro basketball player or a concert pianist, no matter how hard they try. Why should writing be different?

L. OBrien said:

When I tried to read On Writing I thought that there was some pretty solid advice and interesting tidbits about King's personal life, but I put it down shortly after I got to the bit about how everyone can only improve so much. I distinctly remember him saying that those who are born okay writers can become good ones, but never great ones. This irked me, because while some people develop skills at a younger age than others or may have a inclination towards something, improvement isn't limited by natural talent. It struck me as a toxic mindset, and I've never been able to look at him the same way again, especially knowing that he'd once been an English teacher and had probably infected kids with this sort of thinking.

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I think he's right.

I'm a good writer; good enough to be paid by major publishers. Good enough to have more than one book sell through.

I can't write fiction. I don't really have a burning desire to, but I know enough to know that I don't have story.

I can teach most people to be competent writers of non-fiction prose. Good enough to be paid, certainly.

But story can't be taught; I think it can be encouraged and polished and developed, but if you don't have it, you don't.

And while I can teach most people to write competent non-fiction prose, there's a point where they're really not going to get much better than competent if they don't have certain innate talents, like a sensitive ear for the rhythms of prose and the fine nuances of syntax and meaning.

L. OBrien said:

When I tried to read On Writing I thought that there was some pretty solid advice and interesting tidbits about King's personal life, but I put it down shortly after I got to the bit about how everyone can only improve so much. I distinctly remember him saying that those who are born okay writers can become good ones, but never great ones. This irked me, because while some people develop skills at a younger age than others or may have a inclination towards something, improvement isn't limited by natural talent. It struck me as a toxic mindset, and I've never been able to look at him the same way again, especially knowing that he'd once been an English teacher and had probably infected kids with this sort of thinking.

I do, however, agree with the read much, write much mentality. Every time that you put down or arrange words in some way, you improve your sense of how language is supposed to work and how to make your point clearly. That said, some forms of writing are more productive than others. No matter how many forum posts you write, your fiction will improve faster if you're writing fiction.

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I think it is pretty well established that some folks either can't progress or do so glacially compared with others in certain fields that just aren't their personal skill set--even in business it is a common notion with books and aptitude tests (strengthfinder, etc) to utilize this fact. Case in point, they have done tests of individuals who were good at math, fast readers, etc. versus folks who were not good, then gave them a couple weeks of "boot camp" and re-tested them. Despite the notion the additional help should be most useful to the folks who were under-performing, they tend to see the accelerated folks skyrocket and the others make minimal gains.

And that's just one more example in addition to the others posted.


As to if that notion is a "toxic mindset," I tend to think that onus is on the writer, just as I think the hand-wringing over generalities like "show, don't tell" is utter bullshit. Nothing is absolute, and it is up to a writer to decide when to use adverbs, etc. It is also up to them to own their limitations and what can (everyone can improve their writing, always) and can not be done about it. Everyone can write better, and continue to improve their craft. Not everyone can improve to the point where they can make it. But if someone decides they just can't and gives up, that's hardly on King....

I don't know if his line about merely getting good is true or not; neither doies King. All we know is that some writers make it - in art or commerce - and most don't.

I was quite disappointed when I first read the book, back when I was a fledgling writer struggling with writer's block and looking for applicable advice. I felt the only takeaway I picked up from that was from the newspaper article young Steve submitted to an editor and then kept, with all the editor's notes. Those were some great notes!

Nowadays, I find those personal accounts are the best ones. Writer interviews, too. I picked up a lot from those. You get a lot out of those more practical guides, but books like On Writing can show you how writing is woven into a writer's life. There's a lot to learn from that. Another one, albeit more strucutral, is Patricia Highsmith's Suspense.

I picked King's book back up a while ago to look for anything related to my own non-fic's topic, generating ideas. I half-remembered that there were a few bits about that somewhere. Turns out the book is full of them once you stop looking for applicable advice. I was looking for this one specific thing this time, about how he came up with Carrie. So my main takeaway this time was that while people say ideas come from anywhere, the truth is they come from everywhere, and they become isdeas when you start connectiing them into something new in your mind. (Well, not so much a takeaway, more of a confirmation.)

quicklime said:

As to if that notion is a "toxic mindset," I tend to think that onus is on the writer...Everyone can write better, and continue to improve their craft. Not everyone can improve to the point where they can make it. But if someone decides they just can't and gives up, that's hardly on King....

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I agree that the onus is on the writer, but it gets fuzzy when you're talking about high schoolers. He was working with teenagers who were still in a formative period, figuring out how they fit into the world, and fairly impressionable. Discouraging an adult is one thing. By the time you're an adult, it's on you to know who you ought to listen to. But for an authority figure to tell a kid that they're never going to be good? In my opinion, there's nothing okay about that.

Regardless of whether or not natural limitations exist, I think that assuming that you can never be great is simply bad advice. First, it discounts the amount of time and energy that great writers put into developing their skill sets. Second, in doing so, it discourages others from trying. At least for myself, I know that if I assume that my favorite writers were simply born to be great and that I can never reach that level no matter what I do, that sounds like a recipe for giving up. On the other hand, if I assume that they're better than me because they've worked harder, regardless of whether I actually can become that good, it's an encouragement to keep working. If we waste our time reminding people of their limits rather than encouraging them to develop their skills, we're going to miss out on a lot of potentially great writers.

Also, for the study bootcamp, there is the question of learning styles. A couple weeks may not be enough, and some people may genuinely need to put in more hours, but that doesn't mean they can't figure out a system that works for themselves and get there eventually.

I agree with King and his assessment of how much people can improve. Some people are naturally inclined toward certain skills. I studied math for years but consistently struggled and my progress was glacial. Theoretically, I could one day be an award-winning quantum physics professor if I tried hard enough, but the chances of that happening are extremely low.

The same goes for writing. I've tutored English and worked in editing roles where I work with writers for long periods of time, and it's quite uncommon to see people's writing skills spike significantly. Some people just have a spark for writing, and others don't. That isn't to say that writing isn't teachable, as you can definitely see improvements by studying craft—I read and write nearly everyday and am regularly reminded of how much I have left to learn—but I have almost never seen an instance where someone went from being a terrible writer to a great one. I like to think of it like people being easily able to go up one level from where they currently are. A competent writer can become a good one, a good writer a great one, and so on. Beyond that, it gets difficult.

All that said, I think people need to be careful before writing (heh) themselves off as fiction writers. There are a ton of craft elements to consider, and most people can noticeably improve by reading, writing, and accepting feedback. Even though I came from a writing-heavy background in op-ed pieces and journalism, my first several stories were simply dreadful until I started getting the hang of how you do this fiction thing. So, it's important for people to figure out their natural inclination toward writing before they quit. I think most people will eventually hit a ceiling though, be that mediocrity, competency, greatness, or something else.

L. OBrien said:

I agree that the onus is on the writer, but it gets fuzzy when you're talking about high schoolers. He was working with teenagers who were still in a formative period, figuring out how they fit into the world, and fairly impressionable. Discouraging an adult is one thing. By the time you're an adult, it's on you to know who you ought to listen to. But for an authority figure to tell a kid that they're never going to be good? In my opinion, there's nothing okay about that.

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Come on. You are talking about something he wrote in a book for other writers, expressing his thoughts on writing. There is no reason to think that as a teacher, before he was ever published, he had a habit of telling his students they didn't have the talent to become great writers. Even if he thought that, why do you think he would say that to a kid?

At least for myself, I know that if I assume that my favorite writers were simply born to be great and that I can never reach that level no matter what I do, that sounds like a recipe for giving up. On the other hand, if I assume that they're better than me because they've worked harder, regardless of whether I actually can become that good, it's an encouragement to keep working. If we waste our time reminding people of their limits rather than encouraging them to develop their skills, we're going to miss out on a lot of potentially great writers.

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There is also a huge difference between saying true greatness is an inborn quality and saying no one can improve enough to be good - good enough to get published, good enough to enjoy what they do, good enough to have an audience who appreciates them. King never said being publishable is an inborn quality.

L. OBrien said:

When I tried to read On Writing I thought that there was some pretty solid advice and interesting tidbits about King's personal life, but I put it down shortly after I got to the bit about how everyone can only improve so much. I distinctly remember him saying that those who are born okay writers can become good ones, but never great ones. This irked me, because while some people develop skills at a younger age than others or may have a inclination towards something, improvement isn't limited by natural talent. It struck me as a toxic mindset, and I've never been able to look at him the same way again, especially knowing that he'd once been an English teacher and had probably infected kids with this sort of thinking.

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L. OBrien said:

I agree that the onus is on the writer, but it gets fuzzy when you're talking about high schoolers. He was working with teenagers who were still in a formative period, figuring out how they fit into the world, and fairly impressionable. Discouraging an adult is one thing. By the time you're an adult, it's on you to know who you ought to listen to. But for an authority figure to tell a kid that they're never going to be good? In my opinion, there's nothing okay about that.

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I haven't read On Writing. Please tell me, did King actually write in it something along the lines of: "I told my high schoolers that unless they are born great writers, the best they can hope for is to be merely good writers."

Or are you just assuming, because he felt that way about good vs. great, that he must have said it to his students.

Just for the record, this what King actually says in On Writing:

...while it is impossible to make a competent writer out of a bad writer, and while it is equally impossible to make a great writer out of a good one, it is possible, with lots of hard work, dedication, and timely help, to make a good writer out of a merely competent one.

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For King, great writers include Shakespeare, Faulkner, Yeats, Shaw and Welty.

Yeah. Pretty sure King doesn't refer to himself as a great writer in there.

Helix said:

For King, great writers include Shakespeare, Faulkner, Yeats, Shaw and Welty.

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I'm pretty happy with not being at that level.

I'm surprised he says that it's impossible to make a competent writer from a bad one. Isn't everyone bad at writing when they start out? I shudder when I look at some of the things I wrote back in school, yet I think I'm at least competent at writing now. But maybe I'm fooling myself. And if basic writing competence is something that's instinctive, not taught, then why do we spend years drilling school kids in writing at all? They either know how to write well enough to get by in most professions that require written communication (competence) or they don't (bad).

I'm also not sure how to differentiate competence from goodness from greatness. Most people agree that Shakespeare is great, but did he have that reputation during his own lifetime? And can we all agree about which contemporary writers are great versus good versus merely competent? Is there a way to accurately predict which contemporary writers will be forced on future generations of school kids as the "greats" of our own era?

We have literary prizes and awards, of course. Some are voted by juries of highly educated literary types, some by professional associations of writers or editors, and some are awarded by readers or fan groups. But not all books that receive their genres' highest accolades end up being widely read, let alone included on greatest of all time lists a decade or two later.

This is something that drives me nuts, actually, in SF and F. What makes so many of (say) Asimov's (I writer whose work I find kind of flat and just never pulled me in) books appear over and over again on "Great works of SF" lists, yet many writers I like much better, who I think wrote some fantastic work, are mostly ignored?

Roxxsmom said:

This is something that drives me nuts, actually, in SF and F. What makes so many of (say) Asimov's (I writer whose work I find kind of flat and just never pulled me in) books appear over and over again on "Great works of SF" lists, yet many writers I like much better, who I think wrote some fantastic work, are mostly ignored?

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I think it's the rosy lens of nostalgia combined with the fact there are fewer greats when a genre is just beginning to get popular than there are once it's established. If you read something when you were young and less critical, and you loved it, it's hard to then see it as less-awesome once more writers enter the field and raise the bar--or even once you become a more sophisticated reader over time.

Roxxsmom said:

I'm also not sure how to differentiate competence from goodness from greatness. Most people agree that Shakespeare is great, but did he have that reputation during his own lifetime? And can we all agree about which contemporary writers are great versus good versus merely competent? Is there a way to accurately predict which contemporary writers will be forced on future generations of school kids as the "greats" of our own era?

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This is something that drives me nuts, actually, in SF and F. What makes so many of (say) Asimov's (I writer whose work I find kind of flat and just never pulled me in) books appear over and over again on "Great works of SF" lists, yet many writers I like much better, who I think wrote some fantastic work, are mostly ignored?

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So true. I really think the historical greats become historical greats largely from being in the right place at the right time. Of course they're usually really talented, etc, but the thing that catapults them into the literary stratosphere is timing. I've always wondered if Hemingway would be so widely regarded today if he had been twenty years younger or older. Yes, he is a brilliant writer, but his pared back style also landed at precisely the right time (ie, after the First World War when people were starting to look at art a lot differently). If he had started writing earlier, he may have never been successful because the style of the time was more romantic. If he had just been a little kid during the First World War, maybe by the time he got started his style would have already been fairly common and he wouldn't have been such a revolutionary.

Also, agreed about Asimov. I think there is a tendency for "greatest lists" to focus on classics that are classics because of their historical context, not whether readers actually find them that great today. When I was in high school I was in the top English stream, and I was so disappointed about the stuff we studied. We did Ghosts by Ibsen and Heart of Darkness. Yeah, they're classics, but I don't think a single guy in those classes could relate to the works in any way. All it did was sort of teach us that literature was something to be studied rather than enjoyed.

Having said that, it may have been the type of school I went to. It was quite posh, so there was a focus on traditional education. I have friends who are now English teachers at not-so-posh schools, and they do a better job of engaging their students by teaching things like V For Vendetta or The Circle by Dave Eggers.

RightHoJeeves said:

We did Ghosts by Ibsen and Heart of Darkness. Yeah, they're classics, but I don't think a single guy in those classes could relate to the works in any way. All it did was sort of teach us that literature was something to be studied rather than enjoyed.

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We did Heart of Darkness in my senior AP English class also, but not Ghosts. I remember liking it okay, though our teacher made it a bit more relevant, because Apocalypse Now had come out a few years before, so we got a field trip where we went to a special screening of it at a local theater (with permission slips, of course, since it was rated R, though most of us were at least 17 by then).

Other books we read that year included Hamlet, Julius Caesar, Sons and Lovers, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, On Civil Disobedience, Murder in the Cathedral, plus more things by a bunch of dead white guys (I get them mixed up with other years in this honors English series, but I think we did most of the dead male American writers in 11th grade) including a number of plays and short stories. Not a single play or novel by a woman in 4 years of honors English, though.

I liked some of these works better than others (I do enjoy Shakespeare, though I liked seeing recordings of performances or movie versions of the plays better than just reading them), and we learned a lot about history and social issues that were relevant to the times and places these books and plays were written (we learned some stuff about Ireland when we read Joyce, for instance), but it did tend to reinforce the idea that literature is more for historical context and study than fun. I can see why most of these works are considered important, influential, even great, but there are a heck of a lot of equally well-written and significant works and authors that didn't make it onto the study lists, including some that might have been a bit more recent and represented a wide cross section of humanity.

I think our early imprinting about whose writing is most important or significant tends to stick with us and influence our later assessments of quality. And I agree that those "best of the genre" lists tend to all include several novels by the same authors, many of which were written more than 50 years ago, back when the field was smaller and narrower than it is today.

Scalzi did a blog on coming to terms with the fact that his daughter doesn't enjoy many of his own favorites from when he was her age. He concluded that there was no reason she should.

I do remember finding a bunch of SF and F in my dad's bookshelves, and liking some of it, but not all. Many of my favorites from that time ended up being books that had been written more recently, books he liked enough to have purchased but they weren't the favorites he'd go back to reread again and again.

Re: Asimov--the great writers of fifty years ago are like the great guitar players of fifty years ago--today every serious hobbyist and their aunts have better techniques--but the concepts and the inspiration are timeless, if you fall into the demographic that appreciates this slice of the spectrum of the arts.
I love the wooden baroque of the Lovecraft/Ashton Smith/Howard weird fantasy wave, but also the lifeless autistic styles of Asimov, Van Vogt, Campbell sci-fi wave.
A lack of soap opera melodrama in both sci-fi and fantasy is so rare today, that the olden primitivists look ever more attractive.

Re-modernist said:

I love the wooden baroque of the Lovecraft/Ashton Smith/Howard weird fantasy wave, but also the lifeless autistic styles of Asimov, Van Vogt, Campbell sci-fi wave.
A lack of soap opera melodrama in both sci-fi and fantasy is so rare today, that the olden primitivists look ever more attractive.

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Well, we all have our tastes. I just can't get that into it. Never could. I don't care for Lovecraft's style either, though I enjoy the legacy of his iconic gods and creatures. I remember how disappointed I was after playing games like Call of Cthulu and I actually tried to read something he'd written. It's just a taste thing, not right or wrong. But Asimov's and Clarke's work always felt kind of soulless to me--all about ideas, not people (though I did like HAL. Ironic that the computer was the "character" who felt the most human to me). If that makes sense.

I guess I like the emotions and relationships aspect of modern SF and F. They don't feel like soap operas (which I've never cared for) to me. Just people being people.

One thing that's different for younger people today is there's a lot more to choose from. It's not like when I was a kid and young adult and I had to raid my parent's bookshelves (or the dustiest corners of the local library) and borrow books from friends who might not have identical tastes to find new things to read. There are literally endless titles available online. Libraries (and bookstores) seem to have purged a lot of their older classics from their collections too, as they've re-purposed much of their space to multimedia and computers.

One thing that the YA publishing boom has done has made a generation of readers who won't read books that don't have teen protagonist and aren't written in a particular style or voice. The down side of having access to such a huge number of recently published titles is that readers can become more narrow in their choices in terms of voice, style, pov, even genre and subgenre. I see myself doing it, even, and I'm no kid. With so many books that hit my sweet spot waiting for my attention, why pore over books that aren't as much fun for me to read?

Challenges of our times. More choices are great, but I can't help wondering if some of the snarling and spitting that's going on in some genres is because they've become so huge in terms of available titles that the odds of everyone having read most of the same books each year (let alone agreeing about which ones are best) is much less than it used to be.

Well, I've been listening to the same albums for twenty years now, and my new music is unearthing stuff I've missed in the subgenres I listen to anyway. Once a year I force myself to try out new stuff--either contemporary hits or vintage classics--and sometimes one or two things are added to my pile of stuff to listen and relisten to, but generally I stay within my comfort zone. Although it's also an inspiration zone, invigoration zone, meditation zone, healing zone, and mind-opening zone, from my POV.

So I get it when people stay within the confines of their genres and subgenres as readers.
What I don't get is constantly craving new stuff that's absolutely the same, when the genre-defining stuff is already there.

To me re-reading a favorite book for the tenth time gives much more pleasure than reading ten new books in the same field that are not as good. To me quality pleasure trumps by far the novelty quantity impulse.
But that's because I haven't been 15 for a very long time

Re: soap melodrama vs human condition--I find it easy to define what is what by analogy. If it's stuff that would be very at home in Dallas* that is grafted onto swords and tits tomes or planets and intrigues tomes or underdog detectives and such--then it's soap melodrama with period costumes and dragons and lasers.
If it's stuff that would be very at home in The Great Gatsby or Anna Karenina that is grafted onto genre conventions--then it's honest human condition bits.

Since honest human condition bits are almost impossible to find outside a Peter Straub book these days (even high lit guys like Franzen these days are no better than episodes of Deadwood, melodrama-wise), I prefer to stick to 2-dimensional authors, because for my temperament, with melodrama, less is more. Which is also why I can't watch the contemporary Dr. Who and Sherlock Holmes serials, because they are The Guiding Light and As The World Turns, but with Daleks and Moriarty. Which is a shame, I would love to love them, the effects nowadays are terrific, and the actors are fine too.

At different times we as readers (and story consumers in a wider sense) want: a) a quick pick me up (2D page-turners are good for this); b) to figure out stuff about ourselves and the world (human condition authors are good for this); c) to reaffirm our belief in meta-truths (Lord of the Rings, Alice in Wonderland); d) experience marvels and wonders (good sci-fi); e) lose ourselves in someone else's life and its endless twists and turns (soap melodrama).

I haven't had the desire for that last experience since like 8th grade, but that's just my demographic, the one that sneers at endless fantasy serials yet cherishes thin self-contained Ace paperbacks as much as regal literary tomes.

____
* will they or will they not marry; oh no, he's gone blind!; wow, this guy turned out to be her long lost brother; wow her friend stabbed her in the back, how could she?!; what? just as they saved their business from the loan sharks a car hits their kid?! He's in a coma?!--un-nuansed assembly-line stuff based on half a dozen corporate emotions and situations (betrayal, underdog, false accusation, etc.) that takes up the alleged human condition portions of 90% of what's out there in any medium, IMO.

Roxxsmom said:

I'm surprised he says that it's impossible to make a competent writer from a bad one. Isn't everyone bad at writing when they start out?

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A bad writer, I think, would be someone unable or unwilling to learn. Maybe they suffer from the Dunning-Kruger effect, aka they think they're already super awesome and do not need to do foolish things like "study the craft," or maybe they just never found the right guidance and are forever stuck in one place. I've known aspiring artists who've practiced for decades but never progress an inch, it happens sometimes. But most people wanting and willing to put in the work can and will improve.