Literary GIANTS who were “self taught” – the roots of indie?

Ernest Hemingway, Nobel winner, had no interest in attending college.

William Faulkner and playwright Eugene O’Neill, also Nobel winners, didn’t take college seriously and quit.

French painter Henri Rousseau was self-taught and a late-blooming amateur; his first art show was at age 40.

Walt Whitman, another thoroughly self-taught autodidact, ended his formal education at eleven.

Emily Dickinson was another untutored autodidact who worked alone.

Vincent van Gogh was a solitary person who worked outside of any school or tradition. He had only one year’s total training from instructors, but studied ceaselessly on his own.

There are many others, of course.

The writer of the post was making a different point, but it made me think. If these great people threw off the conventions of their time, I wonder if they’d have thrown off the traditional methods of publishing today and been indie authors? Do you see some similarities to yourself? Did you get a degree in writing?

“Most often the reason a writer, artist, composer, etc. is not yet accomplished is… because she isn’t knowledgeable enough yet.”

“The self-taught creator… follows an atypical but most productive route to the knowledge she needs to excel. She looks for it wherever it may be and acquires it on her own. She has high motivation and a thirst for learning about her craft that cannot be quenched.”

Taken from the blog post “Self-Taught Artists and Writers” from the blog at “davidjrogersftw” by David J. Rogers.

http://davidjrogersftw.com/2015/08/21/self-taught-artists-and-writers/