K. Marvin Bruce

Advice from writers to writers is cheap.  I try not to give advice beyond “there’s no right or wrong way to write,” but still I’m influenced by others who say how to write.  After all, you have to please others, no? I’ve been told you have to write short to write long.  The idea being that if your short pieces get noticed then you’ll be in a position to say more.  (I.e., write short stories before trying a novel.)  Then I asked a New York Times bestselling author.  He said, “If I had done that, I’d have never gotten published.” Another chestnut we’re freely given is that we shouldn’t make our readers work to understand us.  Pander to the reader.  This past week I started to read a novel, again a New York Times bestseller, and some thirty pages in I still have no idea what’s going on.  Now, I do hold a doctorate in the humanities so I think I know how to read.  Somebody’s bucking the advice and making plenty of bucks at it. ...

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...