K. Marvin Bruce

  There’s no feeling like it.   Finishing a story that you know is good.   You’re ready to send it to a publisher right away.   But then you hesitate. You’ve received so many rejection notes but each one stabs you afresh when another one comes.   Still, you know this story’s good.   You’ve managed to do something different than you usually do.   Will they, can they appreciate it for what it is? I’ve managed to have thirty stories published—averaging one per every two years I’ve been on this planet.   The rejection numbers are beyond a one-to-one correspondence.   And yet, I know this story’s good. Fiction publishing’s all about convincing some editor you don’t know that you do know.   You know your own writing.   I write many stories that aren’t publishable.   Writing’s that way.   When I do manage a good one I’m like a kid on Christmas morning. It takes thick skin, they say, to be a writer.   My question is should it...

  While I wait and pray for data recovery—as I mentioned last week, The Space between Atoms was lost with the crash of a WD Elements drive—I didn’t want to neglect this poor blog.   Since I’m a struggling writer, I’ll note how editors like to kick you while you’re down. Even while I’m waiting to see if my files can be recovered, I received my weekly quota of rejection letters.   A really good story submitted to a carefully chosen journal, and a collection of stories submitted to a contest.   They all say the same thing—your work is good but there’s so much out there that’s so much better, in my opinion. You see, I know editors, and it’s those last three words that are the killer: in my opinion.   Editors have likes and dislikes.   They’re the gatekeepers for publication success. Early in my fiction publishing attempts, I kept submitting to the same publication— Danse Macabre —because I seemed to have found a sympathetic editor.   This relationship con...

So, it’s the last day of 2019.   I awoke this morning to find a rejection letter in my inbox.   I say “good riddance” to this past year, although it had a little publishing success.   It was better than 2018 in that regard. I’ve got a young writing partner.   She hasn’t published anything yet, but she’s one of the natural best writers I know.   We encourage each other when the going’s rough.   She ended up in the hospital in 2019, and when visiting her she got me to submit some stories again.   Facing an illness will do that to you. Of the stories I sent in during 2019 two were accepted for publication and one won honorable mention in a contest (but alas, wasn’t published).   I sent out a bunch more late in the year and this morning’s rejection may be—it’s too early to tell—the last of blessed 2019. I don’t let my failures stop me from writing.   I’ve got a fourth nonfiction book under contract and nearly ready to ...

One becomes inured.  That is to say, rejection letters are far more common than acceptances.  So it became clear to me while looking at my Submittable page recently.  The number of cheery blue acceptances is largely outweighed by those dreary gray “declined”s. Look, I’m an editor.  I know how this game works.  Every day I see the pitches the hopeful send, wanting to be represented by my press.  Every day I try to think how to write rejection letters that are complementary, comforting, encouraging.  The point is, I see bad writing. Some people see dead people.  Others of us see dead writing.  Books that should never have been born.  When you agonize over every word, and when you know that you’ve got some felicity with the pen (or on the keyboard) being classed with those who clearly don’t understand is painful. Awfully gloomy for a positive post, I must say!  I just received the good news that my story, “Glass-Wall...

How many novels must one man write, to paraphrase Bob Dylan, before you can call him an author?  I’ve completed six, none published, and I’ve got another well under way.  My business card, however, nowhere indicates that I’m an author. Being a writer is more than an occupation.  It’s an identity.  Like the vast majority of writers, I work for a living.  Long hours.  Long commute.  Heavy eyelids.  Sloped shoulders.  Weary sighs.  My boss thinks of me as an employee.  I think of myself as a writer gathering information. For me, there’s an ethics about it all.  I spend a lot of time reading.  Years, if I add up all the hours.  Am I not morally required to give something back?  I’ve written, sweated over, edited, and polished my novels.  Yet they sit on my hard drive seen by my eyes only and the even harder eyes of alabaster editors. Such is a writer’s life.  I’m not really looking for th...

In a recent conversation my friend Steve mentioned a disturbing editorial board meeting.  I’ve mentioned Steve before—he’s an editor at an academic press in New York.  What made this meeting disturbing, he said, was that editors had already decided what a writer’s style was, based on a previous book. Writing style, in my experience, is fluid.  I have written non-fiction books that are, frankly, boring.  That’s what I’d learned the academic presses wanted.  As a writer, however, I can produce pieces of a totally different style.  Who’s to say what kind of writer I am? This disturbs me because editors are the fundamental gatekeepers of the publishing industry.  And they don’t understand writing.  There was a time when editors were writers.  Now they’re business men and women.  I wonder how many of them read for pleasure. Type-casting used to be something actors feared.  I fear it too, I guess, as a writer.  If ...

I’m in that post-euphoria period of receiving the latest round of rejection letters.  As I’ve mentioned before, I go for months without submitting stories for consideration because, unlike all the wisdom promulgated on the web, I have thin skin.  Rejection hurts.  I have to be particularly confident to submit anything. I know I’m not alone in this.  I know that rejections are often impersonal because huge numbers of submissions are received and K. Marvin Bruce is just another face in a vast, vast crowd.  His writing is weird, if literate (hopefully) and his stories aren’t about what they seem to be about.  It’s nothing personal. Thinking about the past can be dangerous.  Writing in “the good old days” seemed to be quite different.  In the first place, it was hand-written.  In the second place, there were far fewer places to publish.  In the third place, if an editor liked your stuff, you’d made a publishing colleague, not just a...

Writers can be suspicious people.  I am related to a somewhat famous author.  He won’t talk about writing and never offers to give any help.  I figured it was just a personality trait. You see, I’m a pretty open and honest guy.  Well, as much as a writer can be.  I’m glad to talk about writing and share the paltry bit I know.  Thus I started this blog.  I’m finding that not many others share this trait with me. I knew an editor who was younger than me.  I’m not exactly wet behind the ears, I have to admit.  So this younger editor was, I suppose, a little suspicious of this older guy who contacted him out of the blue.  Still, he took my card and said he’d be in touch. Deep down I suspected he might be a writer.  I have no idea what he thought of me.  After he left his company to go off on his own, I contacted him and asked if he’d like to talk about writing.  Silence.  Not a word. You have to understan...

Have you ever noticed that on the days when you desperately need a bit of good news—when you’re viscerally aching for it—these are the days literary magazines send their faceless rejection letters?  The universe is tilted against us. I wrote a piece that looked perfect for The Literary Commute .  It was about commuting, and it was very literary.  Even made subtle reference to Whitman, taking his poem in a direction he wouldn’t want it to go. Even though The Literary Commute is new, they sent me a rejection letter on a Monday, a day of direst need.  I would say I’ve lost count of how many journals have rejected my work, but that would be a lie.  I read enough to know that it is nearly every writer’s story. I had a professor once who said, in paraphrase, “If you’re work is good enough for some people to like, it will be good enough for others to hate.”  It seems the haters outdistance the lovers by a considerable margin. Probably the...

With information available at lightning speed all around the world, publishing remains a very slow business.  One of the few jobs unavailable to computers or robots, the editor is a reading machine.  The editor is also a bottleneck. In many presses, once an editor accepts a book for publication, it will still need to go through the production process.  Even in this age of high technology, errors are waiting to creep in at every stage of transference, making proofreading necessary and slowing the process down. It is a lot less expensive to catch an error at the stage of a proof than it is after hundreds, or thousands of copies have been printed.  Even after the long wait for approval, it is an even longer wait until a book appears. Waiting is on my mind as I have my once accepted, frequently rejected novel under consideration with about six independent presses at the moment.  I used to be a believer in single submission only.  Life is too short ...

Some things I just take for granted. My friend Steve, for example, is an editor. Although he works for a non-fiction publisher, he still knows a few things about the publishing process. He suggested that I share some of it with the struggling writers out there. Most of us dream, I suppose, of getting a book published.  I know I still dream about it.  How does it happen?  With traditional publishers, it begins with a query. Editors are, for the most part, very busy people.  Publishers are the ones who give credibility to writers, and to get published, you need to work with an editor.  All editors work with a “slush pile”—submissions that come in unsolicited.  Until they get your query, editors don’t know you exist, and your submission ends up in the slush pile. Slush piles do get read, but they don’t have the priority that a known author or a repeat author with the press earn.  This can take a surprisingly long time. Many editors requir...

The success of a friend felt personal.  Well, perhaps “friend” is too strong a word, but I feel a natural camaraderie with other writers.  He’s a guy I know from work.  We occasionally share projects, and I had no idea that he was a fiction writer.  Until his novel published. As I sent him a congratulatory email, a strange thought occurred to me.  We rely on publishers to get out hard-won efforts out to a reading public, and yet, the relationship often feels adversarial. It’s almost like the publisher is the enemy to writers.  We who seriously write know that we have something to offer.  We pour ourselves into our words, laying ourselves naked for the world to criticize.  And we’re told not to take rejection personally. Is it possible to stand naked before someone only to have that person turn away and walk out and not to take it personally?  Editors and Judas Iscariot.  What a team. As a writer, I read a lot....

I know many editors.  They are always hungry for good material, but in the course of their duties they have to turn quite a few writers away.  Some of the writers, I’m assured, are just this side of insane.  Some have probably never even considered suicide. Editors are sometimes a writer’s worst enemy.  I know deep in my confused web of consciousness that I am a writer.  I have written fiction with a pathological insistence since before my middle school days.  Six novels bear my name.  Not one has merited publication. I wonder about the ethics of editors.  Who made them the gatekeepers of what is worthy of living or dying?  Nine years of my life were spent in higher education, terminating in a Ph.D. that bears no street cred.  How am I to convince an editor I’m no slouch?  Disposable. Anyone with server space and a few extra hours a week can be an editor.  Yes, for just a little storage space, you too can tur...

Sometimes it is all I can countenance even to consider submitting a piece of fiction for publication.  You know, I always thought artists were sensitive people, but these days we’re told to have thick skins—not to take rejection personally.  “I’m sorry, but I don’t like what you’ve spent hours and hours creating, honing, and polishing.  It’s nothing personal.” My day job is a professor at a nondescript college.  I still do research now and again, and like my fiction it is generally rejected before somebody else picks it up and says its worth a look.  Sometimes it is said even to be good. I wrote a scholarly book some years back.  I sent it around to publishers who didn’t like it for various reasons, and so it languished while I moved on to other things.  Recently three publishers approached me about it, expressing an interest.  Ah, editors!  Ye are such a fickle breed! Fiction, however, is far more personal.  It is mi...

No writer really works in isolation.  Although my favorite time of writing falls daily between 3:30 and 5:00 a.m., I am not alone.  In my head are the many other writers I’ve read, and those from whom I’ve learned my penurious craft.  Today marks the birthday of Franz Kafka, one of my literary heroes. My experience of trying to find publishers has been a kafkaesque trial from time to time.  I learned to write by reading those who’ve written before—Poe, Melville, Austin, Kafka.  Their rich writing, it seems, had a place in a past that no longer exists. Something few editors appreciate is the metaphorical and ironic style of writing I employ.  Anyone who reads Moby-Dick and comes away thinking it is a novel about whaling has no subtlety whatsoever.  To write about life’s great questions, you need a vehicle.  Melville chose a whale, and Kafka chose a bug.  Today, unless your style is flashy and full of sparkly panache, you’ll remain s...

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...