Benjamin Clayborne
Auror
Of course it matters!
If talent is completely inborn, and absolutely necessary for writing success, then only folks with talent will ever succeed at writing. Those without, simply won't make it. Doesn't matter how hard they try, or how many hours they work at building their skills. If this were true, anyone without writing talent would simply be doomed to mediocrity without hope of working their way to a higher level of skill.
However, if what we think of as talent is actually the result of skills gained through thousands of hours of practice, then anyone (or pretty nearly anyone) can acquire talent. That means if you work hard enough at writing, you can become an excellent writer - your work is what matters, not your genes.
It's a significant difference.
No, what I mean is, without working your ass off to produce something, you can't tell whether what you have is real talent or not. Imagine two writers starting out, A and B. A's very first paragraph is beautifully written; B's very first paragraph is crap.
Now they both write novels. A's output is consistently as good as the first paragraph, but it turns out he doesn't really have a good grasp of long-term character development. The prose is great but the characters just aren't that interesting.
B, meanwhile, has crappy prose at first, but as he writes he improves, he gets feedback, eventually his prose is as good as A's. And he has a better grasp of character development, how to make characters seem real and interesting.
In the long run, B turns out to be a better writer than A, even though on a first gloss, A seemed like he had more "talent."