A Tale of Two Novels

Early in my professional life, I experienced emotional trauma at the hands of my employer. Many years later the pain is still so vivid that I have tried to deal with like any writer would: by penning a novel about it.

The first attempt, while still not abandoned completely, ended up sounding too self-pitying. A friend of mine with an MFA told me that many students elect to use biographical novels as their thesis. I want the story to be profound, and funny, and not so dreadful. I began revising it recently, but put it back down.

The second attempt was to make it all a metaphor. This led to 75,000 words that didn’t have a strong center. These words lack the cohesion of painful narrative, but they do contain some very nice writing.

I revisited that novel recently. There may be hope for it. Novel writing draws on personal experience. These two novels are not among the six I’ve completed. Both are sufficient, length-wise, to qualify as novels already—they meet Nanowrimo standards (novel number three was a Nanowrimo exercise). I go back and forth between them to deal with the angst.

Self-pity is natural. I would say that those who suffer deserve to explore self-pity, but the public won’t buy it. Pull up your socks, hitch up your goddam britches and get back to it. Buck up or shut up.

Novels are supposed to help us deal with our human experiences. So I’ve been told. Only some human experiences—professional failure, loss of self-worth, depression—have no place in fiction. Get mad. Get some weapons. Blow some people away. People will buy that.

My experience, however, was more profound than that. It delves deeply into the human condition. I suppose most of my stories, once you get past the surface, do. Finding those who want to share that experience is rare. Don’t mind me, I’m just feeling sorry for myself.

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K. Marvin Bruce

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