K. Marvin Bruce

  Well, I fooled myself.   I thought there was one more chapter to The Space between Atoms , but I was wrong.   All 67 chapters have now been posted.   Now I wait. I have a YouTube channel in my real name.   It has only a handful of videos on it, but the other day one got a comment.   I happened to glance at the stats and saw it’d been viewed 80 times.   I haven’t had time to add any videos over the past two or three years. The point is, even while I’ve been doing other things, some people have been finding what I’ve already done.   Perhaps that’s how one gets recognition?   There comes a time when three years can pass without anyone noticing.   Except the reaper.   I started publishing fiction in my late forties.   That was about a decade ago.   I’m still waiting to get my first novel published.   I’ve written seven. I’ve started on a new novel but I’m reminded of just how much work they entail.   Not that I shy...

I’ve been thinking that this blog could use a little attention.   My problem is—well, one of my problems—I lead a double life.   I write fiction under a pseudonym because my real nym is tied to a respectable job.   So it goes. One of the solutions to my double life is that I could start putting some fiction on this blog.   Good idea or no?   I have a novel on which I’m working and it won’t likely find a publisher, so I could start pasting it here, in serial form. On the other hand of my double life I have a nonfiction book under my nonfiction name that is currently due at the publisher’s.   I need to spend time on that too, and I have a job.   And the lawn isn’t going to mow itself. So I’m thinking that instead of neglecting this poor, but truly loved, child of a blog, maybe I could feed it fiction.   That would at least keep it alive.   Right now it’s like a cactus, getting water only a few times a year.   Is that a mixed m...

My, is this thing ever dusty!   The problem with dual identities is that they’re, well, dual.   The working writer has to make a living.   Making a living interferes with being a writer. It’s no secret that I write under a pseudonym.   In certain professions writing is discouraged.   The only way I can get away with writing the fiction I do is by saying “It’s not me!”   I know I’m in good company here.   The average person can’t identify Samuel Clemens. No, I don’t mind the nom de guerre per se, but I resent a work life that doesn’t value the writer.   It’s not just editors, either.   There was a guy in my company who wasn’t an editor.   He quit to become a writer and the general attitude to his leaving was a smirk. Yes, it’s difficult to make a living as a writer.   Unless you get an agent you won’t make much in royalties.   You can’t quit your day job.   And aside from the many hours sapped from yo...

Writing is all about habit.   I recently moved house and with the move I somehow left my old writing habits behind.   Or so it seems.   The fact is I’ve had two non-fiction book assignments in a row and my true love has had to wait. My house didn’t come with a writing nook.   It was a tough market this year and finding some kind of suitable domicile before my apartment lease was up proved a trick for which I wasn’t prepared.   I thought there would be lots of choices, but instead it was catch as catch can.   Writing nooks weren’t in this year. Still, my usual chair was still available and I settled in to try my morning writing.   I had a story accepted for publication—the first time in over a year—and I realized that what I was missing was the drawing in of new material.   I need to see how other people live. There’s a bar within walking distance.   A trendy one that serves only local brews.   There I noticed the be...

Writing’s my retirement grease.   If I have to explain the concept to you, obviously you’re not up to date on the Simpsons.   Well, come to think of it, it’s been a few years since I’ve watched it myself. Willie, the groundskeeper at Springfield Elementary is saving the grease from the school kitchen’s traps for his retirement.   Homer, on one of his get-rich-quick schemes, has been collecting spent grease to supplement his income.   When he targets the school, Willie spies the truck sucking up the goo and cries out “My retirement grease!” Daily work is not only non-satisfying, it’s also time-consuming.   I sit at work thinking how there’s little to do and I could be getting so much writing done while I sit, staring at a screen, waiting for an email to pop up.   I don’t make enough money to retire.   My plan had been to die on the job, but then I realized, if I could make money on my writing, I’d have some grease. Right now ...

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.  ...

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...

Fiction or non-fiction?  Maybe it’s both/and rather than either/or.  The line between the two is thin. Lately I’ve been working on a large, creative non-fiction project.  I’ve still got a novel out for consideration (as it has been almost continuously for half a decade now), but there’s a true-to-life story that’s got its talons in me. I’m not a post-modern writer, but I am a post-modern person.  I believe, in other words, that true objectivity is beyond human beings.  If that’s the case, facts are invented and not discovered.  Histories are interpretations—not what actually happened.  Fact sounds like it’s become fiction. My post-modernism breaks down when it comes to writing.  Fiction is narrative.  I’ve tried to read post-modern novels and I always end up frustrated and confused.  I want a story to follow.  Preferably a moody one. Now, the non-fiction post-modernist would say that both fiction and non may i...