Self taught is listening to essential / your favorite albums and picking out by ear what they're playing, learning it, and applying the template those songs laid to your own music, and hopefully, expanding upon it.
I know people who brag about being self taught because they didn't take formal lessons or classes in person, but watching instructional videos, reading instructional books, or other musicians you know teaching you things is not self taught.
It's definitely possible to teach yourself without learning theory, because you actually learn about theory anyway subconsciously by what you learn from other people's songs that you teach yourself.
Having said that, there's no shame in taking formal lessons. I did and I'm very glad I did. You by no means have to be self taught to be a great musician or songwriter, and conversely, you by no means have to take formal lessons to achieve either. Different methods work for different people.
Re-reading the OP, if you stick with a) not learning theory, and b) not learning other people's songs, you attempting to write music you'll create a huge cacophony of noise without some sort of guidance. However, that cacophony would still technically be music and you would still be technically self taught, because no one taught you anything, rather you just took a huge guess. Could you eventually figure out how to sound good this way? I really don't know...... If you don't want to learn theory at least learn a bunch of your favorite songs. You don't even need to learn by ear, check out tabs online. When you play enough songs within the same genre(s) you'll begin to see / hear patterns that youl'll be able to discern as theory, even if you don't realize it as such.
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