Do you feel that the ability to do creative writing is a gift you are born with or a skill you develop?  I have never felt that I had the gift and the few attempts I have made at it were very frustrating and not enjoyable.  I have not made any attempts to write a story in many years because for one thing I can't seem to come up with even a basic plot line that hasn't already been beaten into the ground.  I have nothing original to say!

If this is a skill one can develop, I would love to know how I can develop it. Writing is such a great thing to be able to do and share with others, I just feel like at this time I don't have anything to share.

Being a great writer is definitely a gift. I know because the first time I wrote a poem the words came out of nowhere, the same thing happened when I wrote my first screenplay. I believe people can work hard to become good at a certain skill, with a gift it is something that God gives you and you don't have to work as hard.

Yeah, I tried really hard to write poetry in HS, I wanted so badly to be good at it.  But every time I looked back at a "good" poem I had written a few weeks before, it turned out to be rubbish.  Same thing with my stories, I just end up describing a bunch of things as if it's a biography or something and there is no real plot line to make anyone have a reason to care about anything I have said.

I think that any skill can be learned, but it takes a lot of practice, over and over. It helps a lot to have a natural leaning to enjoying something, and people who have a natural ability for writing, drawing, or music, will learn much faster than someone who doesn't have a natural tendency for the subject.

It is kind of like riding a bike, we can all learn to do it, some learn faster than others, and some have better skill to become an athlete with the bicycle.
So, even if you aren't going to be the next  Dan Brown, or Picasso, that does not mean that you can't learn to write or draw, but you have to dedicate time to practice and practice.

I think it's a bit of both. I think that writers probably start off with a gift, or a spark as I would describe it, but then it takes a lot of hard work and dedication to develop that into a skill and become a really good writer. Perhaps the gift makes it easier to come up with ideas to begin with, or as happyflowerlady says, makes it easier to learn the actual craft of putting words on paper. Then the skill comes in learning how to develop those ideas and that craft into a good end product.

From my own experience, I've always found that ideas come fairly easily, but turn them into a full-blown plot can be harder and actually getting it written is the hardest bit of all and the bit that most easily could be classified as a "skill" that can be developed by practice, practice and more practice.

Some people are born with the natural ability to write beautiful things out of thin air and others have to try very hard at it. I think it is a gift to be able to write good pieces without much effort and it is also a skill that can be learned. If you really set your mind to it you can be a very good writer. Like with anything, it takes a lot of time and learning. You have to be patient with the learning process and just keep at it. I am a much better writer than I was 20 years ago, and in 20 more years I will be much better than I am today.

I think it depends on the context, actually, especially the audience. If we consider the idea that nobody is an objective judge of what is good art, not even yourself, then I consider that there is neither a gift or a skill necessarily...but there is an industry standard to meet. And, there are avenues into that industry standard.

If you find the right audience (including yourself in a good mood) then it can feel like a gift. If the audience scrutinizes a lot more, then it can feel like a skill because there are standards that you must conform to in order to be considered at all, let alone congratulated.

That's if you can get any artistic work started at all, which to me feels like a gift because it's not something that happens because I decide it's going to be so. It feels external, or at least subconscious.

I guess it's a little like asking if life is a gift or a skill. Sure, you can follow guidelines for longevity and greater quality of life, better social status or whatever, but isn't life at all in the first place really a gift?

Year ago, we had a lady (barely more than a teenager) and she played the piano at church. That girl could hear a song one time, then just sit down and play the song like she had known it for years.
She had never learned to read music, so she did what is called "playing by ear", which basically means that once she heard it and knew how it should sound, she could reproduce the music with ease.
That is what I call a gift, and it all came naturally for her.

Then you have the child that learns to play the piano at an early age, practices for hours every day, and becomes a skilled pianist.  While there may also be a gift of music here, a lot of his playing is skill.

So, Dancing, I believe that if you really want to become a writer, you can do it.   I think that as you write more, it will get easier for you to do, and ideas will come to you easier as well. 

Another important thing that I think can help you to learn to become a writer, and that is to become a prolific reader. 
Very often when I am reading a book, I will look at how the writer wrote a passage, or explained something, and I learn something that helps me when I want to write something of my own.

DancingLady, I believe writing is part gift and part skill. Though we learn the basics of writing in school and through books and mentors, the best writings come from spontaneous inspiration and innate ability. Writing prompts and books like Roberta Allen's Fast Fiction: Creating Fiction in Five Minutes stimulate the imagination and the creative juices.

Dancing- you could always post some of your work here as well and we can look at it and give you feedback. That is what is great about this forum, we all have a passion for writing and artistic creativity. When I first started writing for pay, I was so scared because I did not think I was good enough to write something that would be read by someone other than a teacher or someone close to me. I then submitted a couple of articles and had a client who actually requested me to write a few more. That was all I really needed to start gaining confidence in myself. You will get there if you really keep at it. People tend to be more hard on themselves than others are on them.