K. Marvin Bruce

Every great once in a while something extraordinary happens.   As I mentioned in my last post, I really hadn’t submitted fiction for publication for almost three years.   (I had a couple of non-fiction projects going.)   About three weeks ago I began submitting again. I have a backlog of stories ready to go.   That backlog is now one story less.   “The Pain of a Caterpillar” was accepted, to my great delight, by Ghostlight: The Magazine of Terror .   I’ve finally broken the magical number of twenty short stories accepted for publication. The truly remarkable thing, however, was the alacrity with which it was accepted.   I have been writing fiction for over forty years and never had a story accepted on the same day it was submitted before.   I was absolutely thrilled. As a writer, fewer things make you feel as validated as acceptance.   You have to go through an awful lot of rejection to get there.   This particular ...

I used to tell a young friend interested in writing that there’s no right or wrong way to do it.   While I write in some form every day—lately it has been non-fiction—I have been wondering if I go about my fiction the right way.   I wonder this because I keep a spreadsheet. This spreadsheet contains information about every submission I’ve made: the date sent, to which magazine, word count, and response.   I color-code everything so I can tell at a glance if a story’s still awaiting a publisher or not. While looking at this spreadsheet recently, I noticed that it had been two or three years since I’d tried to get any fiction published.   Well, apart from my novel (which is also on the spreadsheet); I sent it to an agent who turned it down earlier this year.   What I noticed about my submissions is that they tend to happen in June. I’m not a student and I’m no longer a teacher, so June has no special connection with free time.   I do, ho...