K. Marvin Bruce

One of the most challenging aspects of being a working writer is dithering.   Shilly-shallying.   Not being able to decide.   Is this story done yet?   Should I revise it for a tenth time?   When do I stop writing fiction and get back to non-fiction?   And all of this has to be decided for a mere half-hour of writing time a day. I’ve neglected this blog a little because I’ve been finishing up a non-fiction book.   To no one’s greater surprise than mine, an editor at Penguin is actually reading it.   You just never know.   Meanwhile novel number seven has been demanding my attention.   One through six haven’t been published yet either. Don’t forget the children.   Stories.   Lots of stories.   Some days three or four story ideas crowd into my head at a time.   And I only have half-an-hour to write.   Decisions, decisions! I’d pretty much decided to turn back to non-fiction for a while when I had an un...

Like many writers, I prefer longhand to keyboard composition.  There’s something natural and calming to holding a pen in one hand and head in the other, imagining away the day before a stack of paper. Like most writers I don’t have time for longhand composition.  The great nemesis of creativity—work—limits writing time to minutes a day, except on the weekends.  If I ever wish to get published, I have to do it with my hands in my lap.  (I have a laptop that serves as my ersatz brain.) Editing, in my experience, is easier on a printed manuscript.  The electronic world plays tricks on your eyes.  We have to develop the skill to read on a screen.  For over five thousand years writing was strictly hardcopy.  Now it almost never is. When my novel, The Passion of the Titans , had been accepted by Vagabondage Press, I was elated.  It has been a lifelong dream to have a novel published.  Then the clouds rolled in.  I had an emai...

Sometimes I have to remind myself that whether or not I’m published, I am a writer.  I know this because writing has been a lifelong avocation, and, although I’ve never been paid for it, apart from biological necessities, it is the only thing I do every single day. I’m really sensitive about my writing.  It often takes me days, weeks, or even months to gather the courage to send anything out for publication.  As a result I usually send a bunch of things out at the same time—I try to avoid simultaneous submissions—and then I’m met with a hailstorm of rejections in an equally short time. What’s trickiest are those that don’t reply soon.  I have stories, presumably not accepted, as submissions to publishers that have been out for over three years.  A year is not uncommon.  Several months goes without saying.  Waiting is part of the game. My novel, Boeotian Rhapsody , was under contract with Vagabondage Press.  Unfortunately no kill fee w...

The internet has filled the world with noise.  Communications specialists tell us that it is important to distinguish signal from noise since signal is potentially useful information.  Ah, but the internet is so vast!  SETI would have more chance of finding signal in an infinite universe. So when I heard from my contracted publisher that Passion of the Titans , my first novel accepted for publication, is being released back to me, my breath caught in my throat.  Perhaps I should’ve heard the signal earlier.  Accepted last summer, it was downgraded to an ebook release this spring, and then finally cancelled. Wheat and chaff are very different from one another.  As are sheep and goats.  Signal and noise are far more ambiguous. Like Edgar Allan Poe, and probably here the likeness ends, I have read many inferior bits of literature that have engulfed public demand.  Has anybody ever tried to praise the literary merits of Fifty Shade...

Even as my latest rejection letter arrives, I’m finishing up my fifth novel.  I have this sneaking suspicion that editors just don’t get me.  I’ve written (almost) five complete novels and only Vagabondage Press has given an inkling of encouragement. Well, it may be that my writing sucks.  I’m willing to admit that as a possibility.  The problem is everyone from high school English teachers to professional writers say the opposite.  The editors, however, hold the keys. My next novel is about the gods.  When Neil Gaiman writes a novel about gods it becomes a best seller.  I’ve spent a lifetime studying gods.  When I write such a novel, I’ll have a hard time getting a publisher even to open the email.  I won’t stop trying, though.  To be a writer, you’ve got to take the reins. Those of us who write, do so because of who we are.  Those who get paid for their work are lucky, at first.  To be a writer “successfully” me...

I’ve been talking to my friend Steve about rejection.  You see, the constant stream of rejection letters for someone trying his damnedest to be heard is felt by both editors and authors.  Mostly authors. Steve has a blog, Sects and Violence in the Ancient World , that used to get nearly a thousand hits a day.  Now he barely gets a hundred.  Perhaps the world of the internet has already grown weary of what he has to say. For my part, every few months I get brave and lob three or four stories to literary magazines and sit back to wait for the rejection letters to roll in.  I’ve had six short stories published.  All but two were first rejected before someone else saw a little value or entertainment in them. I’m told that writers must have thick skin.  I also know that I put an awful lot of myself into my stories.  Yes, rejection is personal.  It can be nothing else. Even Vagabondage Press, who will be publishing my Passion of t...

After lurking around the fringes of the World Wide Web for several years, I’m pleased to announce the forthcoming publication of my novel, The Passion of the Titans with Vagabondage Press next summer.   The Passion of the Titans is the story of Medusa, told from her own point of view—if you want to know how that’s possible, I urge you to read the book!  I’ll give you a hint, though.  Rock-and-roll did not begin with Little Richard, Chuck Berry, or Elvis Presley.  It started a long, long time ago in a land far away. For those of you who’d like a little taste of the my other work, I’d point you to the excellent online magazine Danse Macabre .  My first piece published there, “O Tannenbaum,” won the 2009 prix d’écriture de Noël in Fiction for the magazine.  Unfortunately, in this age of impermanent servers and services, the piece has disappeared into cyberspace.  My second story, “Hide and Seek,” appeared and disappeared in the same journal...