Bonnie Jo Campbell Quotes

I find it both fascinating and disconcerting when I discover yet another person who believes that writing can't be taught. Frankly, I don't understand this point of view.

Writing can't be taught.

I never was a big believer that you can teach writing per se.

Read everything you can on writing. Join online forums and critique groups, go to conferences, get feedback, and learn, learn, learn!

No one can help you write. No one can teach you how to write.

I've been trying to write. I also spent a lot of time on different campuses, in conversation, helping other writers. That's what I do: I teach them writing.

However great a man's natural talent may be, the act of writing cannot be learned all at once.

I am very interested in people trying to write because I don't have a big academic background at all.

I learned to write by writing.

Being a bad writer a thousand times first.

I've taken every writing class I've had available. I took classes in high school, and I took English and writing classes in community college, but I dropped out of college. I also attended a local writing workshop two years ago.

People say you can't teach writing, but I think that's nonsense.

I never think that any writer can teach someone how to write.

When I began to be published, people got the idea that I should 'teach writing,' which I have no idea how to do and don't really believe in.

No, I have to really focus, especially when I'm writing because I wanna be good at it.

I think that, in principle, a workshop is such a beautiful idea - an environment in which writers who are collectively apprenticed to the craft of writing can come together in order to collectively improve.

Writing teaches writing.

I'm not a writer who teaches. I'm a teacher who writes.

I do have the feeling that other writers can't help you with writing. I've gone to writers' conferences and writers' sessions and writers' clinics, and the more I see of them, the more I'm sure it's the wrong direction. It isn't the place where you learn to write.

Creative writing lessons can be very useful, just like music lessons can be useful. To say, as Hanif Kureishi did, that 99.9% of students are talentless is cruel and wrong. I believe that certain writers like to believe they arrived into the world with special, unteachable powers because it is good for the ego.

Writing is a trade ... which is learned by writing.

Does anybody learn writing, or do they just touch someone who lets them see the power of the deleted word?

You can't learn to write that way - by writing directly for the screen. Wait until you're 30. But in the meantime write 200 short stories. You've got to learn how to write!

If you can't write well then your ambition to become famous in this way will be frustrated. Either that or you have to get an amanuensis who will write for you.

You learn to write by doing it.