K. Marvin Bruce

Maybe you’ve noticed it too.   You finish a story and you’re impressed.   It came together better than you had imagined it would.   You might’ve even surprised yourself with how nicely it fell into place. Excitedly, you send it to publisher after publisher.   In their various polite ways of writing pinhead letters, you know you see something they can’t.   You start rewriting.   Changing things.   Some carpentry here.   Some cosmetic surgery there.   Better now? Once again they yawn and say no.   This just doesn’t interest or excite them.   They’re looking for something you just haven’t got.   Meanwhile, you’ve marred your original piece, the one that spoke to you in a way that made you certain you had something to share. After a while you turn to other things, leaving it in your drawer of unpublished gems.   I read a biography of L. Ron Hubbard once—don’t worry, I’m not a Scientologist.   Hubbard...

After a story is rejected from a literary magazine—a rather frequent occurrence—I always revise it.  For stories rejected half a dozen or more times—a rather frequent occurrence—the stories can shift substantially.   In a version of the old saw that “this is the axe used by George Washington to chop down the cherry tree; it has had five new handles and three new heads,” I wonder if the story is the same after such revision.  I write in the flush of inspiration.  The story comes to me roughly complete. The literati say “no,” and I assume the fault must be my own.  I knuckle down and start trying to revise to their liking.  The action changes.  The ending changes.  The characters change.  Is it the same story? Is the fault that my addled brain seems to have trouble telling a story someone wants to read?  Is it the curse of an internet that makes writers of anyone with fingers to type?  I started writing fiction four decad...