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
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.
country drinking class
Drugs and drinking affect every family I know, country and city, middle-class and poor.
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 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.
moving worry people
I figure that I'm always going to be fine, one way or another, but I do worry about other people who have difficulty moving from one world to the next. It's the folks who are truly invested in their lives who have the hardest time with change.
mind portions findings
As a writer, I can live somewhat independently, occupying nooks and crannies and finding meaning there. I can even live in my mind a good portion of most days.
character car office
Some people tell me they would be afraid of my characters, but I tell those people [that] they meet these characters all the time. They just don't care about them when they meet them, at the gas station, the car wash, the post office even.
hard-work writing lessons
The best and easiest lesson for me was to learn that writing is mostly hard work.
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.
training black weapons
I have a second-degree black belt in Okinawan kobudo weapons training.
dwelling miles quarters
Where I live you're not supposed to shoot a firearm within a quarter mile of a dwelling.
smart people cautiousness
My donkeys are Jack and Don Quixote. They're very smart, very cautious. Much of what people consider stubbornness in donkeys is actually cautiousness.
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.