Bonnie Jo Campbell Quotes

To develop your own voice, you have to keep writing a ton, and this is something where I think Twitter is helpful. I use it to write a ton of jokes. You have to write a ton of bad stuff before you know what you're good at. And that's what some people I think have trouble with, the thought of getting past the bad stuff.

What had happened was this. When still young, I had gotten the idea from somewhere that I might be able to write... Maybe the deadly notion came from liking to read so much. Maybe I was in love with the image of being a writer. Whatever. It had been a really bad idea. Because I couldn't write, at least not by the bluntly and frequently expressed standards of anyone in a position to offer any encouragement and feedback.

There's no really other way to learn writing than by writing. So accelerate that as much as you can. The more you write, the better you'll get. What also helps, though, is walking away from broken stuff. Not everything's going to work. Killing two years of your life trying to resuscitate a dying novel, I don't know. Why not just write a different one? You'll have more ideas. You can't help having ideas.

I liked to write from the time I was about 12 or 13. I loved to read. And since I only spoke to my brother, I would write down my thoughts. And I think I wrote some of the worst poetry west of the Rockies. But by the time I was in my 20s, I found myself writing little essays and more poetry - writing at writing.

I'm a great believer in the experiential theory of writing.

I'm not a great writer.

I kept trying to write these books that were sort of outside of my realm, and I kept failing.

I'm not a very good writer. I'm working at it.

Anybody could write a bad script, and I'm one of them, you know?

Early on, I tried fiction, but I wasn't very good at it. I wrote a very bad novel that is thankfully sitting in a drawer somewhere.

Everyone has a certain amount of bad writing to get out of their system.

I was a terrible writer at first.

If you asked someone, 'Can you play the violin?' and he says, 'I don't know, I have not tried, perhaps I can,' you laugh at him. Whereas about writing, people always say: 'I don't know, I have not tried,' as though one had only to try and one would become a writer.

Writing is hard, but the more you write, and enjoy what you write, the better it gets.

Beginning writers must appreciate the prerequisites if they hope to become writers. You pay your dues - which takes years.

I became a writer because during several of the most important years of my life, writing seemed to me to be the most unreal, unattractive, and unecessary idea ever imposed upon the human race.

Books are great for if you want to work on the craft of writing for yourself, or, you know, to write novels or indie films, stuff like that.

I wrote short stories when I was a teenager, but they weren't any good and I kinda knew it.

My advice to would-be young authors is to read a lot, write a lot, and not worry about creating a finished product. Keeping a journal is not a bad idea either.

I've lost my writing skills since college. I couldn't write a book. It would take a long time.

It's true that some of us become better writers by living long enough. But this is also how we become worse writers. The trick is to die in between.

I wrote two million words of crap. Maybe I'm just a slow learner .

By writing much, one learns to write well.

Well, I have to write. A lot of people forget that. They think I’m sort of crazy baffoon who can’t make up his mind what to do in life

Though The Kite Runner was my first completed novel, I had been writing on and off for most of my life, primarily short stories, and primarily for myself.