K. Marvin Bruce

Early in my professional life, I experienced emotional trauma at the hands of my employer.  Many years later the pain is still so vivid that I have tried to deal with like any writer would: by penning a novel about it. The first attempt, while still not abandoned completely, ended up sounding too self-pitying.  A friend of mine with an MFA told me that many students elect to use biographical novels as their thesis.  I want the story to be profound, and funny, and not so dreadful.  I began revising it recently, but put it back down. The second attempt was to make it all a metaphor.  This led to 75,000 words that didn’t have a strong center.  These words lack the cohesion of painful narrative, but they do contain some very nice writing. I revisited that novel recently.  There may be hope for it.  Novel writing draws on personal experience.  These two novels are not among the six I’ve completed.  Both are sufficient, length-wis...

As an erstwhile novelist (six written so far, none published), I have always relied on inspiration.  That is to say, all the novels came to me.  The ideas were there, ready to suggest themselves.  Like a comparable date. I finished my latest effort last summer.  I still need to go back and rewrite and revise, but the fact is it has an introduction, plot, characterization, climax, denouement, and conclusion.  It is complete in draft.  The same is true of its five siblings. I’m now in the process of trying to cobble together another.  You see, I have only a few minutes each day to write—usually less than an hour.  As a result, I frequently produce short stories.  I’ve have 13 published, but I have dozens more to submit.  Since some of these stories share a setting, I wondered… Can a novel be Frankensteined from these disparate parts?  I know novelists have done this many, many times before.  The characters, however, ...

Now that January’s come, and nearly gone, we know the Mayan calendar was wrong.  Not to worry—this is something that any writer knows—the end of the story hasn’t been written yet. I’ve been writing for decades now.  One of the earliest lessons I learned, once I’d turned from short stories to novels (I’ve written several, but The Passion of the Titans is the first to interest a publisher), is that writers are near-sighted.  Oh, I’m not denying that there are visionaries out there, but when I write, I may have a plan for my characters that is never realized.  Like in life, unseen circumstances intervene.  Some writers, I’ve been told, sketch out the storyline ahead of time and know just what is going to happen. Like the Mayan, however, they might be surprised.  At least I am.  I start a novel with an end in mind: my personal 2012.  That end suggests a beginning, for there’s a story here to be told.  The means of getting from th...

The Passion of the Titans is a sexy book.  Quite apart from the expected libido of a rock star, Medusa is, in a word, hot.  A young goddess in a world literally full of Adonises and Apollos.  What is a girl to do? Studies have shown that priming yourself can deepen creativity.  It’s probably just evolution in action, but thinking about sex makes you more creative.  It may seem sexist, but the old saw about the hapless writer working away with the picture of a naked (fill in the gender) in from of him/her (select one) is accurate.  Blame it on your hormones. No one knows whence creativity emerges.  Ornaments and flourishes hardly seem necessary in the hard business of living life.  Some of us would rather die at our writing desks than give it up.  Our nature compels us to create, to be gods. Creativity, like libido, ebbs and flows and surges and gushes.  Some days you might as well be in the Atacama Desert, not even a cactu...

The part-time writer has a limited supply of time.  Although I try to be consistent with the piece of my day dedicated to writing, I also find myself the victim of inspiration.  I mentioned in an earlier post that I’d finished four novels.  I’ve begun far many more than that. The works I abandon, like children I love, are never intended to be neglected.  I write by inspiration.  Writing is like having a favorite food; if you eat it every day it soon loses its intensity.  Most of what I write reflects my current Muse.  Apart from days when I just have to force myself, my writing is based on that charmed idea at present in my head, beguiling me with possibilities. I’m currently working on a new novel.  I began it about two weeks ago.  At the time I was in the middle of another novel.  Well, “middle” is a bit generous.  I’d actually written the first chapter and a half, and I’m still in love with the idea.  Like a wanton...

While The Passion of the Titans will be my first published novel—something about which I’m very excited—it is far from the first novel I’ve written.  It comes in at number four.  Nestled between my master’s degree and doctorate was my first completed novel.  Written while I was largely unemployed, trying to help my new wife make ends meet, I plunked out a clunker that I only ever very briefly considered sending out to publishers.  I’ve still got a copy somewhere. I find that it is important to keep copies of even failed writing attempts. My first attempted novel dates back to about seventh grade.  I was a sickly child and while home from school with one bout of flu or another, I began writing a somewhat developed, multi-chapter story.  As a somewhat more mature writer, years later I ripped the pages in half in embarrassment.  As an even more mature writer, years later I taped them back together. I began work in ernest on a novel while teachi...