Divided Loyalties

As an erstwhile professor, I used to research and write academic papers. As a professor outside the academy, I no longer have the opportunity. My day job, however, takes me occasionally into the hallowed halls and I start to feel a little lonely for the academic publishing world.

Sure, the papers are boring and read by maybe a dozen people, but I never had the difficulty of getting them published that I do with my fiction. My non-pseudo-nym was fairly well known among colleagues and they knew, as a friend once said, “the author is as important as the story.” In the fiction realm, I’m nobody.

Recently I met with many professors. The experience divided my loyalties. Before meeting with them I had been making good progress on my latest K. Marvin Bruce project. Since meeting with them I’ve been brooding over whether to try more academical writing. So boring. So dull. Yet, I can get it published.

It sort of makes me wonder what’s wrong with the fiction-publishers’ world. Just when I think my writing sucks I get nominated for a writing award. It can’t go on my professional résumé since my professional colleagues don’t know I write fiction. They comment on how productive I am. They have no idea.

I still write serious, academic stuff. In fact, I published a book last year. Still, my heart is in fiction although, if the publishers say with Captain Ahab, “From Hell’s heart I stab at thee!” If you cut us, do we not bleed?

Different areas of a writer’s brain are activated by these different kinds of scribbling. I don’t take academic writing of others too seriously. I guess I don’t take much too seriously. The obvious exception is my writing. I write two blogs, so many fiction stories I’ve lost count, and academic papers, yet I’m left thrashing about the ocean, a man who can’t swim.

The world isn’t always a friendly place for writers. Even with my limitations, I intend to keep after the fictional beast. I’ve got something to say and even a nobody can make a difference, if somebody will really listen.

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K. Marvin Bruce

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