You cannot swim for new horizons until you have courage to lose sight of the shore.

William Faulkner was a titan of American literature, but his path to literary success wasn’t the smoothest — he had to lose sight of the shore before he found his way. With the outbreak of World War I, he tried to join the U.S. Army but was rejected for being too short, so he joined the Canadian RAF. He then enrolled at the University of Mississippi, but his efforts resulted in a “D” grade in English. He worked odd jobs and had a handful of poems published, but it was his move to bohemian New Orleans that set him on a new course, shifting from poetry to prose. His first three novels were only moderately successful and left him at odds with his publishers. So, in 1928, he began writing “The Sound and the Fury,” using a more experimental style. The novel wasn’t immediately successful, but Faulkner had very much found his new horizon.