The Writing's the Crisis

Being a working writer means living with inherent contradictions. For fifty weeks of the year daily life involves awaking between 3:00 and 3:30 a.m., writing for half an hour, and catching a bus to over eight hours of work in New York City. Then riding the bus back home again in time for supper and bed. I’m not complaining, just observing. That’s what writers do.

That lifestyle—constantly tired, anxious, and pressed for time to get the mundane chores done (paying bills, balancing the checkbook, taking out the recycling)—wears me down like a grindstone. When the weekend comes I sleep an extra half hour or so and, although refreshed, I awake without the urgency that frames five days a week. It’s a crisis.

Every year I save up enough vacation days to take off between Christmas and New Year’s. As a former professor this is a no-brainer. In my industry (publishing) there’s no such thing as an emergency. Nobody dies if a book is released a week later than scheduled. Even so, publishers don’t get this natural caesura of the year off. My first year in the biz, I sat in the office with no one answering emails or calls because everyone else has this time off.

I save five of my precious vacation days every year to take this time off. To write, I think, to finish projects. To catch up on all the things I don’t have time to do. Then the expensive break comes and inspiration flees. I get enough sleep and can’t think of a thing to write. My half-finished stories collect at my feet. There is no crisis.

Every year’s end I come to realize that the writing’s in the crisis. The stories dwell in that frazzled mindset of never having enough sleep. The constant financial worries. The looking ahead to no retirement because who can afford retirement when the rent is so damned high? The moment I put my foot on that early morning bus, the story ideas begin to flow.

I won’t have time to write them down, though. Not until next year at Christmas. So the working writer’s life goes. They’re called holy days for a reason.

Comments

Working Through It

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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. ...

K. Marvin Bruce

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