"Guess I suck at being an author..."

[Discount_Blade]

My exact experience, I found that classes like that overcomplicated the process by a ridiculous degree, and that people who excelled in those classes weren't particularly better than others who didn't. At the end of the day, it's all about how much time goes into reading/writing/editing, and also passion and perseverance.

Nah, even more extreme. In my experience, the ones who could recite to me what was and wasn't a compound sentence or a fragmented what-the-hell-ever, typically weren't as good of a writer as those who didn't understand the technicals, but could drop an awesome short story down in a week. My experience at least.

I partially think it's some kind of personality trait or something. Like, those who consume themselves in the technical side, lessen their capabilities in the creative side, and vice-versa.

 

[OvidLemma]

In my experience, schooling and practical skill are two separate axes, at least as far as artistic pursuits are concerned. There's some correlation between schooling and skill in that it's rare to see somebody at the top of their game without some formal education in the arts (whether that's writing, painting, etc.) or to see somebody who absolutely sucks despite a decade of rigorous schooling. But the correlation is pretty loose, and there might even be a bit of an 'inverted u' pattern when people get too deep in the weeds on the technical side of things. Almost every best-selling author you'll find has had some schooling on the rules of their chosen language, but very few of them have PhD's in rhetoric or composition.

Basically, if you have 100 rigorous rules of composition to keep in your head, that might be too many to allow for really fluid writing and you're at a danger of becoming too rigid to allow for much creativity. And, really, if you have high technical skill but your creativity is crap, then you're just wasting your time trying to do art.