We know that we need to explore desire in fiction - many say that the only way a story exists is that a character feels a strong desire - and nature is the place where creatures act on their desires in the most pure way imaginable, so maybe nature also works as a metaphor for whatever emotional troubles my characters have to negotiate. I'm interested in my characters as survivors, and maybe that works best when the old-fashioned notion of humans surviving in wilderness is not too far away.
Bonnie Jo CampbellWriting is so wrapped up in ego, but with math one is just trying to get it right, although you're often wrong. I think math helped me become a good critic of myself, come at writing a little less personally.
Bonnie Jo CampbellAfter a year, it was great to get out of L.A. and return to Hyde Park. Since my grandparents lived in Hyde Park, I had been coming there since I was a tyke.
Bonnie Jo CampbellIf you have someone falling out of the boat, you'd have to drag the boat up the river and film the same scene ten times, every time, dragging the boat exactly where it was up the river.
Bonnie Jo CampbellThe great thing about fiction is that I don't have to settle on an answer to any troubling question, or even a solution. I hope that my stories serve as explorations and help show readers how and why real-life women don't always make the "correct" decisions in the face of economic and sexual troubles. We all screw up, but the women I write about don't have back-up plans or money in the back or resources to fix what they have broken.
Bonnie Jo CampbellAny of us who listen to the news or listen to stories our neighbors tell are accustomed to violence. We have to decide then to ignore the violence and create a gentler world in our fiction, or to heighten the violence through the use of point-of-view in order to explore it and gain some insight and understanding. Since I'm living with the violence and trouble in my brain, it's kind of a relief to write about it, to get it on paper, to put it in context, to find meaning in it.
Bonnie Jo Campbell