K. Marvin Bruce

I’m not a wealthy man.  In fact, I’m barely middle class.  I do, however, have occasion to stay in hotels from time to time.  When you’re young, comfort doesn’t seem to matter as much as price, so I stayed in Motel 6 or Super 8 whenever possible. There’s something evocative about cheap hotels.  You know all kinds of things have happened in these thin-walled rooms with their heavily used furniture.  It depends on how far your imagination is willing to go. When I attend professional meetings, however, and the company is paying the bill, I stay in conference hotels.  These are a cut above.  They always make me feel like writing.  That hint of aristocratic luxury in the air suggests something slightly askew.  Some obscure haunting.  The sins of the indolent rich. As paradoxical as life is, such hotels make writing difficult.  I’m not in my usual writing chair at home.  I can’t get comfortable in all this luxury....

Sometimes work gets in the way of life.  Although I manage to write for a few minutes every day, sometimes I’m so distracted that the words are sluggish, like heavily polluted water.  At such times, I rely on other authors to help me through. I recently read Paula Hawkins’ The Girl on the Train .  I wasn’t sure what to expect because I try not to read reviews before I start a book.  To be honest, I don’t often read bestsellers.  Still, as I’ve come to realize, if I want people to read what I write, I have to write like what people read. It’s no accident, I suppose, that my favorite writers are often people who’ve struggled while they were alive.  Struggled either making it in general, or struggled to be recognized in their writing.  Ignored by the mainstream, they became classics after they died. The Girl on the Train is a fast read, and the story is well told.  Rachel makes a great unreliable narrator.  Still, I had the sense, ...

Writing a story is like turning on a flashlight in a midnight room.  The words you use describe only part of the scene.  What remains unsaid is just as important as what makes its way to the tale. Our stories are mediated approximations.  They can never express the fulness of the experience, and sometimes I wonder if the same experience is fully unique anyway.  Do I experience a sneeze the same way as you? I’ve been reading a lot of descriptive writing.  I know it’s fallen out of favor these days.  Books from before the internet describe what a person looks like, each piece of clothing, hair style, and characteristic marks.  Now just “Joe” or “Jane” will do. The sense of smell is underused in descriptive writing.  Perhaps because most people don’t pay much attention to scents, or perhaps because what you smell is far too personal to reveal.  We are animals, and like animals, we can be led by our noses. I find that the d...