Bruce Coville Quotes

The first time I can remember thinking that I would like to be a writer came in sixth grade, when our teacher Mrs. Crandall gave us an extended period of time to write a long story. I loved doing it. I started working seriously at becoming a writer when I was seventeen.

Writing became an obsessive compulsive habit but I had almost no money so I thought about being an urban firefighter and having lots of free time in which to write or becoming an English teacher and thinking about books and writers on a daily basis. That swayed me.

I have earned wages as a waitress, a nanny, a librarian, a personnel officer, an agricultural laborer, an advertising secretary, a typesetter, a proofreader, a mental-health-care provider, a substitute teacher, and a book reviewer. In and around the edges of all those jobs I have written poems, stories, and books, books, books.

When I went to college I took a creative writing class and decided in a week to be a writer.

My major was Fine Arts and Education thinking I would become an Art Teacher. I couldn't visualize myself as an art teacher, thinking how it wouldn't work.

Sometime around 2006, I decided I had missed my true calling as a young adult author.

I knew I wanted to be a writer at 13. Before that, I told everyone I was going to be an artist.

Because I'm such a creative person, and I've always got my nose in a book, I suppose it was only a matter of time before non-fiction turned into fiction again. But I never consciously set out to become a writer and I never thought I'd be doing the things I'm doing today.

I kind of fell backwards into acting. I was studying to be a high school teacher. I look now and I understand completely, or actually barely, how much work it is to be a teacher. It's an incredible amount of work.

My theory is that I decided to be a writer when I was about seven, but of course it is not as simple as that. Like most writers, I had to work at other things to earn a living and wrote mainly in the evenings, often very late at night, for many years.

I don't think I knew I would be a writer. I wanted to become a writer, and I tried to write.

I'm a fairly ordinary person - a lifelong reader, a former software engineer, and former math teacher. I come from a wonderful family of teachers, musicians, librarians, and engineers. I think I surprised them as well as my friends and coworkers when I took up writing as a hobby and let it take over my life!

I thank God I was a reporter before I became a writer.

But I was going to be a teacher my entire life, so I wasn't counting on money to much.

My relatives used to laugh when I talked of being a writer.

I initially thought I was going to be a teacher. Maybe like an elementary teacher or something like that, which would be fun. Maybe someday.

As with many teens, my first jobs included babysitting and mopping floors at McDonald's. Since then, I've held jobs a diverse as selling used cars, selling apparel, cosmetics, and real-estate, substitute-teaching six graders, teaching undergraduate creative writing, and working as an editorial assistant for a literary magazine.

I knew that I wanted to be a writer even before I knew exactly what being a writer entailed.

I didn't know anything about writers. It never occurred to me they were regular people and that I could grow up to become one, even though I loved to make up stories inside my head.

In 1982, when I was almost 26 years old, I decided I wanted to write fiction. I'd majored in journalism in college, and I'd always assumed I would write nonfiction.

I thought I'd definitely be a writer, whatever I did.

Dad worked his entire career as an aviation technician. Mom was a legal secretary who became a teacher. We lived a simple American life.

I wanted to be a landscape architect, but I trained as a teacher; I worked in publishing; I was a waitress.

I was under the assumption that the first job you get out of college is the job you have for the rest of your life. That's how my parents were; my parents have been teachers for as long as I've known 'em. I was worried that I'd gotten into something that I was going to hate.

The move to creating stories was a natural progression for me, but the most pivotal time was probably in 6th grade: That year, a friend introduced me to the stories of Ray Bradbury, and a student teacher introduced me to creative writing.