K. Marvin Bruce

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, ...

I confess.  I’m a self-taught writer.  Actually, I’ve been taught by the hundreds of people whose books and stories I’ve read.  Technique, more properly speaking, is what I taught myself. From my earliest days I wanted to be a writer, but didn’t say so for two reasons: 1) it sounded a little too arrogant, and 2) it sounded a little too much like John Boy Walton.  But write I did. When it comes to laying out plots I often stumble.  The overall trajectory of a novel is clear in my mind from the beginning, but as I write things begin to morph: the character I thought I knew intimately turns out to be somewhat of a diffident stranger, I resolve crises too quickly, an event I never anticipated enters the story. Am I writing or being written? I’ve heard of writers who spend vast amounts of time sketching out their plots in meticulous detail.  These are the writers, I expect, who don’t have to work cruddy little jobs to keep their sorry-assed spi...