Bonnie Jo Campbell
Bonnie Jo Campbell
Bonnie Jo Campbellis an American novelist and short story writer. Her most recent work is Mothers, Tell Your Daughters, published with W.W. Norton and Company...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
CountryUnited States of America
jobs couple writing
Weirdly the writing experience has not really changed that much except it used to be that I was busy because I had to work a couple of jobs to earn money, so I didn't have time to write.
writing trying get-better
Nobody tells young writers it's okay if you're not very good, you'll get better. So I just thought I'm not very good, so I should try to do every other thing besides writing. That's how I ended up being a hitchhiker, a world traveler, and a mathematician.
writing four way
In fact, when I finally realized I was really going to write, when I was about thirty-four, I was working on my Ph.D. in Mathematics. I was just about to earn my Master's along the way, but I knew something was wrong because I found myself crying all the time.
writing unhappy matter
I was unhappy and I couldn't figure out what was the matter. And he told me to go take a writing course. And I didn't even know that one could learn to write in writing courses.
writing luck ifs
I thought that you had to learn to write by yourself and if you couldn't do it, then you were out of luck.
writing animal stories
Maybe the hardest lesson is the one I have to learn over and over again, that each story is its own animal, that every story I write is going to come only with difficulty.
hard-work writing lessons
The best and easiest lesson for me was to learn that writing is mostly hard work.
writing self my-own
I'm not much interested in my own self when I write. I'm interested in what I observe out there, what's going on around me.
morning writing fighting
I can't personally drink or fight too much nowadays because I have to be perky in the morning in order to write.
writing skills america
I realized that I was writing about folks with lots of skills, especially fix-it skills and survival skills, who were nonetheless not doing well in the new-millennium America.
writing creating numbers
I wasn't writing stories with the intention of creating a particular collection. I simply wrote stories, and then discovered common themes among a good number of them.
writing married beats
You can't beat a good sonnet, and you can write a sonnet without being married to the damned thing.
writing years truth-is
The truth is I tried to write for years and I wasn't very good.
writing math thinking
Writing is so wrapped up in ego, but with math one is just trying to get it right, although you're often wrong. I think math helped me become a good critic of myself, come at writing a little less personally.