K. Marvin Bruce

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.  ...

This week past was Banned Book Week.  It is kind of a holiday for me as a writer.  For the past several years I have read a banned or challenged book on or about this time.  Of course, much of what I normally read is banned stuff. This practice began when my writing partner Elizabeth was still in school.  As she was assigned classics that I'd never read, I tried to keep up, reading them as though I were assigned the books. Catcher in the Rye , J. D. Salinger's masterpiece, was one such book.  Although it has sat on my shelf for years, I finally got around to reading Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 .  Kate Chopin's The Awakening ,  John Gardner’s Grendel , Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita ,  and many others have brought new insights to my inner eyes. Although I abhor the idea of books being banned, sometimes it performs a very great service.  Banned books garner a great deal of attention and sometimes become bestsellers because of it....

Writers explore the depths of humanity’s experience.  At the same time, there are topics that we aren’t allowed to plumb. Let me back up a bit.  When I started to teach myself about which literary magazines would accept what kinds of stories, I spent a lot of time reading the do’s and don’t’s of the editors.  Some won’t allow men to write with a woman’s voice or vice versa.  Others disallow sex scenes and some forbid topics without which Nabokov could never have written Lolita .  Write short, still others say, anything over 1000 words is too long. Being a compliant sort, I tried for a while to avoid those things that would get me into trouble.  When someone is established, however, I’ve noticed, they can break all the rules and get rich.  So why are topics forbidden? I know editors.  A good friend is one.  And editors are people with tastes and prejudices just like the rest of us.  The problem is, there are a limited number ...