Pay Per Back Writer

Confession, they say, is good for the soul. So I’m over fifty and haven’t broken through to the paid writers’ club. I write under a pseudonym. I love taboo topics.

To be a writer, I’m told, you have to get out and promote your stuff. I wonder how you do that with a false identity. Mine is a matter of necessity. Although I’m half-a-century on, I have family members way ahead of me. They don’t know what I do with my free time.

My family tend to be conservative Christians. There are some words I’ve never heard uttered in my humble homestead. Words that, if you want to be a realistic writer, you’ve got to use. Not to mention the ideas that the Bible strictly forbids.

I live in my head. My daily existence is unremarkable. That’s one reason that I write. The other day I was reading about some people, in real life, stranded in an isolated location. They had to do what they could to survive. All I could think was—if I were one of them, I’d want to write it down so people could know what happened.

Literature, although fiction, is very true. In my case anyway, the things I write about have happened, in some form, to someone. That someone often finds his fingers on the keyboard. Without fantasy, I’m nothing.

Writing is a place for me to do the things I’ve never done. Nor will be able to do. I’m married, steadily so, and yet, dare I confess, my mind wonders what it would be like to start it all over again. What if I had been raised without the fear of Hell?

Would I have done anything differently? Would I still have been a writer? Would I have ever been paid for the job that takes just as much time as the one that my business card declares is who I am? Would K. Marvin Bruce every have had a single hit?

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

Neglectful Parents

If I was a parent I’d be accused of neglect. I have to say 2017 was the least published year of recent memory. Not that I’ve been neglecting my fiction, but I had a non-fiction book accepted and I work full-time and commute to that job—you get the picture. I’ve also had a personal epiphany. If you can write, you should get paid for it. I know a publicist (not my own; I don’t have one) and she says she won’t let her authors even write an op-ed if they don’t get paid. I guess I’d never get published then. My Medusa novel had a flicker of hope for a few moments. A publisher actually wrote back asking for the rest of the manuscript. That’s never happened before. Then the editor disappeared. Even called me by the wrong pseudonym. I’ve gotta wonder about that because the second half of the novel’s even better than the first. While looking for an agent for my non-fiction (couldn’t find one of those either) I came across several who said they liked quirky ficti

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,

K. Marvin Bruce

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