In her book, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking, American author and lecturer Susan Cain disputes our modern society’s bias against introverts. She makes a case for productive introvert-extrovert collaborations and mentions the partnership of Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs in transforming Apple to the iconic company that it is today. While the two shares the same first name, they are polar opposites in that Wozniak believes that creativity springs from isolation, and the late Steve Jobs was known to be an expressive visionary who was always unveiling Apple innovations on stage.
Wozniak has this piece of advice:
Most inventors and engineers I’ve met are like me — they’re shy and they live in their heads. They’re almost like artists. In fact, the very best of them are artists. And artists work best alone — best outside of corporate environments, best where they can control an invention’s design without a lot of other people designing it for marketing or some other committee. I don’t believe anything really revolutionary has ever been invented by committee… I’m going to give you some advice that might be hard to take. That advice is: Work alone… Not on a committee. Not on a team.
Here are more reclusive writers in history who have thrived in their isolation.
5. Edgar Allan Poe
Biographer Arthur Quinn described the creator of the detective fiction genre as shy and restrained with strangers. Poe’s 1829 poem Alone is said to be an autobiographical expression of his solitary agony.
6. Harper Lee
It took over half a century later for the famed author of To Kill A Mockingbird to write her second book, Go Set a Watchman, recently published in July 2015. She hasn’t accepted an interview since the one she granted in 1964 where she described the enormous success of her first book as one of sheer numbness … It was like being hit over the head and knocked cold.
7. Marcel Proust
The French novelist who penned the seven-volume masterpiece In Search of Lost Time holed up in his bedroom, sound-proofed with cork walls. Three years before his death, Proust slept at daytime, wrote at night, and survived on merely one meal a day.
8. Emily Dickinson
The only traces of her mysterious reclusive behavior are seen in her poetry collection. The American poetess was rarely seen out of her family home, talking to visitors through the door, lowering baskets from windows for packages, listening to her father’s funeral in the garden via an open bedroom door.
9. Hunter S. Thompson
The founder of Gonzo journalism appeared to have lived an extroverted lifestyle as suggested by his widely acclaimed Hell’s Angels: The Strange and Terrible Saga of the Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs (1967). This required him to live with the Angels to immerse with their lifestyle and put it on paper. In the mid-1970s, however, his writing dwindled as he became more withdrawn. Just like other famous writers, he had a tough time with fame.
Read the prequel of this Author Advice here.
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I find your comment most interesting as someone who was once a introvert with social issues I have learned to adjust however I have not accomplished as much before my behavior changed except for a book I am about to published called A Mouse in The Gorilla House. which has given me a fresh new look at socialization.