Stimulate your Passion

The Passion of the Titans is a sexy book. Quite apart from the expected libido of a rock star, Medusa is, in a word, hot. A young goddess in a world literally full of Adonises and Apollos. What is a girl to do?

Studies have shown that priming yourself can deepen creativity. It’s probably just evolution in action, but thinking about sex makes you more creative. It may seem sexist, but the old saw about the hapless writer working away with the picture of a naked (fill in the gender) in from of him/her (select one) is accurate. Blame it on your hormones.

No one knows whence creativity emerges. Ornaments and flourishes hardly seem necessary in the hard business of living life. Some of us would rather die at our writing desks than give it up. Our nature compels us to create, to be gods.

Creativity, like libido, ebbs and flows and surges and gushes. Some days you might as well be in the Atacama Desert, not even a cactus in sight. Other days you’re writing secret messages on banana leaves in the poisonous slime of colorful dart frogs and sending it across the steamy, piranha-infested Amazon on a raft made of cocoa trees to your lover stranded on the other side. For those days in the desert, it might help to keep your midnight fantasy close at hand.

I write, therefore I am.

Comments

Dusty

My, this thing is dusty. My fans—hi, Mom!—perhaps believe me to have perished in the pandemic. No, it was nonfiction’s fault. Since the pandemic began I’ve had two nonfiction books published and have written a third. With a nine-to-five job something’s got to give. Unfortunately it’s been fiction. Well, the groundhog didn’t see his shadow yesterday, so it must be safe to come out. I shuffled away the rejection notes and began submitting again. I’ve got a backlog of weird stories and maybe some new publishers have emerged? The thing is, don’t you just hate it when you’re in the mood to submit and some lit journal has its window for submissions firmly shut? My last story, “ The Hput, ” was published about three years ago. Oh, I’ve submitted since then, but with no traction. Well, it is winter. I’ve got a lot of stories lined up. I’ve been sending them out again, dreaming of making a dime at what I love doing best. When you’ve been writing for half a century, you l

Too Much Writing?

Has this ever happened to you? Have you written a story that you’ve completely forgot? Not only completely forgotten, but made unfindable? I play games with my stories and sometimes the joke’s on me. Okay, I suffer from graphomania. I write constantly. I do try to keep organized—I use a spreadsheet that has all my submissions on it. It has rejection/acceptance dates (mostly rejection). Lots of information. I decided to list on it every story, whether finished or in process. There are far too many (mostly in process). When I finish a story I often submit it. If I get burned, I’m shy about resubmitting. I often rewrite at this stage. Then, when I feel brave enough, I try again. The spreadsheet is color-coded. There, in the color that indicates finished and ready to submit is a story cryptically titled “The Password.” I don’t remember this story. I can’t recall what it was about or why I thought it was ready to publish. Looking through my electronic files,

The Same Old Story

After a story is rejected from a literary magazine—a rather frequent occurrence—I always revise it. For stories rejected half a dozen or more times—a rather frequent occurrence—the stories can shift substantially. In a version of the old saw that “this is the axe used by George Washington to chop down the cherry tree; it has had five new handles and three new heads,” I wonder if the story is the same after such revision. I write in the flush of inspiration. The story comes to me roughly complete. The literati say “no,” and I assume the fault must be my own. I knuckle down and start trying to revise to their liking. The action changes. The ending changes. The characters change. Is it the same story? Is the fault that my addled brain seems to have trouble telling a story someone wants to read? Is it the curse of an internet that makes writers of anyone with fingers to type? I started writing fiction four decades ago. If I’d tried to start publishing then, perhap

K. Marvin Bruce

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