[thirdtruck]

Agreed. While someone who saw my writing as a college freshman might have thought they had discovered a "natural", that would have ignored the years spent unwittingly honing my craft in online roleplaying environments.

Until we find a very proficient author with a demonstrable lack of writing experience, we have to assume they received direct or indirect training of some kind. The burden of that disproof lies with the proponents of the "natural/gifted" hypothesis.