Julianna Baggott
Julianna Baggott
Julianna Baggottis a novelist, essayist and poet who also writes under the pen names Bridget Asher and N.E. Bode. She is an associate professor at Florida State University's Creative Writing Program...
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth30 September 1969
Julianna Baggott quotes about
writing bored childhood
I didn't start writing so that I could more deeply know myself. I was bored of myself, my life, my childhood, my hometown. I started writing as a way to know others, to get away from myself.
storytelling shows
The basic rule of storytelling is 'show, don't tell.
writing cutting fighting
Writing across genres has made me more prolific. When one is fighting me or simply not cutting it, I turn to another.
college catholic becoming
While I was in college becoming a good Catholic I was also becoming a writer - one haunted by Catholicism.
writing passion agonizing
Writing is my obsession, my passion. My relationship with it is one of the most complex and agonizing and richly vexing that I have in my life.
different needs genre
I don't have a favorite. I need different genres at different times.
character stories knows
My work is to know the characters intimately and to tell their story.
husband reading writing
Sometimes when reading aloud to my husband, I'll start crying. It completely stuns me. As if the words in my body and on the page - in relation to each other - are cocooned against my own feelings about what I'm writing until they're loosed in the air and become their own. Then I realize what I may or may not have done.
senior sibling writing
I wrote before I could write. I got my hands on a journal, maybe a hand-me-down; I had three older siblings. My first entries are in the handwriting of the sister closets in age (5 years my senior). She must have gotten tired of my dictations because she gave up and then my blocky scrawl shows up. I wrote plays as a kid mostly.
writing genre-is feelings
One of the reasons I write in different genres is that I get to have the feeling - even fleetingly - that I'm not just writing like Baggott again. I can escape myself.
voice style different
Different genres allow me to not feel so hemmed in by my own voice, tics, style.
writing dark trying
I don't know when I'm writing dark. I don't know when I'm writing funny or even heartbreaking. I'm always just trying to write it true.
writing choices stories
You want the greatest trick for writing a novel? Here it is: imagine urgently whispering your story into one person's ear - and only one. This one visualization will clarify every word choice you make.
holocaust childhood suffering
My childhood was marked by the great fear of nuclear holocaust. We practiced our Civil Defense Drills, lining up in hallways, curled to the floor, but we knew we'd die or, worse, survive only to suffer radiation and slow death.