K. Marvin Bruce

  Sometimes life’s too busy to be leading a double life.   My fiction writing has once again been suffering because of nonfiction.   Funny how that goes. I have my fifth nonfiction book coming out this summer and a sixth written in draft form.   The real problem, however, is the nine-to-five job.   As a professional, it’s expected that the eight-hour day be more like ten.   And what with basic survival, and social time, writing both fiction and non can be a challenge. In a spate of optimism I submitted three or four stories back in the summer, with predictable results.   I finally got brave enough to submit my Medusa novel again.   This one has quite a history, starting with being under contract in 2012. I’ve had a few nibbles since the publisher pulled the plug after an editor left.   Hey, as a professional I know that’s not a very professional thing to do!   Publishers that don’t live up to their obligations, well, let’s just say they ...

  I haven’t submitted anything for publication for several months.   Once the courage wears off, after having had some success, it seems that I’ve become thin-skinned again.   Part of the reason, I suppose, is that I’ve had pretty good success with non-fiction. But I really want to write fiction. One idea, and it’s not something I figured out, is that submitting to contests is a good idea.   Somehow knowing that hundreds of others are also trying makes it seem less like rejection if I lose.   I can say, “there were hundreds of others—chances were small to begin with.” I really have no idea how many submissions your typical magazine (print or electronic) gets.   I do know that a number of editors don’t get my style, or what I’m trying to do.   It’s not really horror.   It’s more weird fiction.   But literary. What’s wrong with the literary weird?   To me, the unusual or uncanny is what I’m looking for when I read a story.   I’ve read...

I spent about six months of 2015 writing a creative non-fiction book about my experience of commuting.  Amusing anecdotes from my time on the bus were sprinkled in among accounts of my youth, which, in retrospect, involved commuting too. Like most of my writing much of it was “getting the job done” writing—telling the story.  Not every sentence can sparkle.  Amid the prose, which I hope was lively, were some very clever bits, if I have to say so myself.  And likely I will.  I gave the manuscript to a friend to read. By her guarded response I could tell the book really didn’t work.  I’d spent my precious writing time for half a year pouring, polishing, and preening.  All for naught.  If even your friends don’t like it, there’s no point in sending it out to be eviscerated by strangers. Depression sank in.  I’d already imagined finding an agent for it.  Accolades coming in on my wit.  What I had only rhymed with wit. T...

One of the tropes rife in the editorial world, regarding non-fiction, is “this should be an article instead of a book.”  This is a very disappointing thing for an author to hear.  After all, s/he spent years developing an idea into something long enough to be called a book, only to have it suggested s/he should cut it down. I write fiction, and I love to do so.  Once I’m in the  world I’ve imagined, it is difficult for me to break away.  In my day-job, however, I have written, and continue to write, creative non-fiction.  I recently managed to get one of these pieces up to 60,000 words so that I could call it a book.  A friend suggested maybe it should be an article instead. This is the dilemma of the writer seeking publication.  You have to meet the expectations of a publisher.  Nobody knows the piece as well as the author, and it hurts to cut organs away—body parts that your mind organically grafted into the body of your work. ...