K. Marvin Bruce

Stress can be great for writing.   Having too little time to practice the craft, in some odd way, makes it flow more easily.   Take the case of the working writer on vacation. I sometimes feel bold enough to call myself a writer.   My job doesn’t depend on it, of course, but who finds meaning in their job?   My sense of purpose comes in the off hours.   Nevertheless, each day presents minimal opportunities to spend with my true vocation.   Then comes vacation time. Unstructured days spread out before me like a trail of breadcrumbs through the forest.   I have stories I’ve been working on for months.   I have at least two non-fiction projects going as well.   At last I will have long, open days when writing will flow and I’ll live in the gooey comfort of constant inspiration.   As if such things ever happen. Vacation is family time.   Writers—those of us who live alone in our heads—can’t simply separate ourselves f...

Perhaps the most difficult thing about being a working writer is deciding how to spend the limited time you have to write.   Since I had a completely non-lucrative life as a non-fiction author while working in academia I have found those who decide whether to publish you or not often consider your last book and its sale track.   That can be bad news for those of us who were once college professors. It’s not impossible for an employed professor to become a novelist.   Vladimir Nabokov was an entomologist and yet because of literature professor after writing Lolita .   Umberto Eco was an academic when he broke out with The Name of the Rose .   Carl Sagan published Contact .   The list could go on, but need not.   You get the point.   It may be difficult, but not impossible. I’ve written five novels since earning my doctorate, and three non-fiction books.   Of these only one has been published, and it is my least favorite of all.  ...