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?

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Patterns

There’s a pattern I’m noticing. For fiction publishers. Even if you aim low you’ll find it a struggle. Part of the reason is the pattern. Lots of websites list publishers. The smaller, hungrier presses either eventually close or get to a place where they require an agent to get in. That’s the kiss of death. Although my stories have won prizes, and been nominated for prizes, I can’t get an agent interested. I’ve queried well over a hundred, so the agent route is one of diminishing returns. This too is a pattern. Back to the smaller presses. I check many lists. What I write, you see, is highly idiosyncratic. It’s literary but it’s weird. Publishers don’t know what to do with it. If a smaller press published stuff like this, I’d find it. The pattern includes writers who never get discovered. Ironically, a number of editors of fiction literary magazines (mostly online) tell me they enjoy my wor...

Creative Righting

Rejection of my writing is a rejection of my imaginative world. That’s why I was cheered by the acceptance of one of my stories this week. That makes number 31. I’ve been working on a lot of fiction lately, even as nonfiction book number 6 is going to press. The ideas are still there, and bizarre as ever, but publishing venues just aren’t welcoming. The other day I had lunch with a professor whose wife is also a professor. She just had her first novel published, and so he pointed me to her indie publisher. I went to their website to learn that they’re closed to submissions. I have to admit that my latest accepted story, “Creative Writing Club,” was probably given the green light because I know the editor. That seems like a pretty dicey way to get any notice, doesn’t it? You have to know the right people even in the low circulation world. My fiction is difficult to classify. It’s got speculative elements to it. ...

Maybe Okay

A couple pieces of encouraging news, perhaps, dear struggling writers. I had a couple short stories accepted for publication in recent weeks. As a fellow writer recently said, “You've got to keep trying. Somebody will like what you wrote.” That’s a bit of sunshine. And it’s likely true. But the stories: “The Crossing,” about two men in a boat trying to cross the Atlantic, was accepted by JayHenge Publishing. JayHenge is a small, but paying publisher. I was flattered when they wanted it for their Masque & Maelström: The Reluctant Exhumation of Edgar Allan Poe anthology. Being associated with Poe in any way feels good. The second story, “St. Spiders’ Day,” had been brewing in my mind for years—yes, this is a long game! A friend pointed me to The Creepy podcast. Since the story hadn’t been written, I followed their guidelines of what they wanted. It worked. I recently heard a successful wri...

K. Marvin Bruce

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