K. Marvin Bruce

My writing partner Elizabeth has started a writing club in her local community.  I am really thrilled, since having others to share the enthusiasm for the craft is one of the most fulfilling aspects of life that I can imagine.  Talking with fellow writers has been my panacea and placebo for many years. In a pique over my own lack of progress, I followed up on the many places where I’ve submitted material and have heard nothing in return.  Perhaps a dozen literary magazines regularly reply when you submit something.  The rest will just leave you wondering. As I was crawling over websites looking for any evidence that my submissions might still be alive, it occurred to me that I write for myself.  As another friend once said, we write what we can’t find anybody else writing.  I do it knowing that most of it will never be published. There is a difference between writing for personal fulfillment and writing for publication.   My writing is...

A friend recently traveled to Oxford, England.  On his blog he mentioned that J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis used to meet in a pub there.  They actually met with a group of writers who encouraged one another in their craft.  Tolkien and Lewis were only the most successful. Curious, I started looking Oxford up on the web.  Every March they host a Writers’ Festival.  No wonder, because in addition to the two mentioned above, Oxford has been able to claim some of the most famous English writers in the world. Oscar Wilde was an Oxford student, and Lewis Carroll, of Alice in Wonderland fame, was also a resident.  Thomas Hardy lived in Oxford for a time, and Philip Pullman still does. Certainly there seems to be a connection between the educational atmosphere and the arts. A writer, of course, requires no educational credentials.  Writers are writers.  Still university towns house that increasingly rare commodity—bookstores.  When y...