K. Marvin Bruce

  There’s a pattern I’m noticing.   For fiction publishers.   Even if you aim low you’ll find it a struggle.   Part of the reason is the pattern. Lots of websites list publishers.   The smaller, hungrier presses either eventually close or get to a place where they require an agent to get in.   That’s the kiss of death. Although my stories have won prizes, and been nominated for prizes, I can’t get an agent interested.   I’ve queried well over a hundred, so the agent route is one of diminishing returns.   This too is a pattern. Back to the smaller presses.   I check many lists.   What I write, you see, is highly idiosyncratic.   It’s literary but it’s weird.   Publishers don’t know what to do with it.   If a smaller press published stuff like this, I’d find it. The pattern includes writers who never get discovered.   Ironically, a number of editors of fiction literary magazines (mostly online) tell me they enjoy my wor...

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 ...

The self-critical writer is an odd beast.  In fact, I sometimes wonder if I’m not working at cross-purposes with myself in trying to get published.  You see, despite all the “no”s I receive from editors, I am my own worst critic.  I put a lot of care into my stories—there’s nothing slap-dash there.  Yet when I watch movies I often groan at the state of the writing.  They’ve made it, and I haven’t. The same is true when I read novels.  I’ve read many—most by major publishing houses with “bestseller” splashed all over the cover that left me with a shrug and a yawn.  They get multiple book contracts.  I get rejection slips.  (Or I would if they still sent slips.)  They don’t even tell me why. I don’t really need rejection slips to critique my work.  I critique the hell out of it.  I go over stories time and again, like a rock tumbler, even after they were pretty good to begin with.  Such is a writer’s life....

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...

I’ve lost track of how many stories I’ve written.  Writers write primarily for themselves, but at a certain point it occurs that maybe somebody else would like to read your stuff.  You can get disabused of that notion pretty quickly, but still you’ll write. I subscribe to Duotrope.  It’s a search engine with useful content for potential publishers.  So when I finish a story I let my fingers do the walking to find someone who might like it.  I can’t classify my writing; it’s all over the place. You find a publisher then read what they want.  It’s not exactly like what you do, but maybe close enough?  You give it a try. I’m a monogamous guy.  I never did like dating—those with rejection complexes seldom do.  When I find a publisher, I stay close.  Then, inevitably, they begin sending rejection letters.  The relationship has grown cold.  I have trouble going back to past writers.  I head back to the singles bar c...

it, and part of me feels utterly like an ass.  Like a poser.  A wannabe.  Only professionals have agents, right? I’ve been writing since I was a tween.  Living in a small town with parents who’d never gone to college, and a mother who never finished high school, I had no idea how to get published.  I discovered that by editing my high school paper I could publish my own stories, but that felt like cheating. In my days of formal schooling, publication became purely academic.  Serious scholars published serious papers.  I tried to have some of my poetry published in my college literary magazine, but the editors said it was too depressing. Although I’ve been writing fiction since the 1970’s, I didn’t start trying to publish it until 2009.  I was scared and unsure of myself.  My first publication won a small prize, and a subsequent story won a more competitive recognition.  Those who publish books, however, were less kind. I...

So, I've been thinking about how writers write.  A colleague who just published his first novel said that he planned it out in detail.  Each chapter was driven by what would have to happen in the next chapter to reach his final resolution.  The final result was a fun read. Some famous writers, I've been told, write by the seat of their metaphorical pants.  They sit down and begin to write with a vague idea of where the story should go.  They, like many of us, discover their characters have minds of their own.  Hopes, dreams, and plans that conflict with those of the author. I often write in snippets.  Great phrases come to me and I think, "that would make a good story."  I write them down.  A notebook is never more than a few inches from me at all times.  I used to have a waterproof note board in the shower.  Some of the best ideas come when I'm driving. When I can catch these snippets, I write them down.  My digital file...

“The writing is good,” and that's half the battle, no?  If I have to get rejection letters, then those with helpful advice are better than those who don’t say why.  Usually I assume my writing just sucks.  The latest letter, however, said the writing is good.  Only the pacing sucks. I’ve always struggled with pacing.  I like to build a mood; too many hours spent with Poe, Lovecraft, and Bradbury.  Never paying close enough attention to my masters.  Thing is, time moves on and tastes change.  I’ve learned to imitate the passé.  Although I’ve had a dozen or so acceptances in my life, each rejection still hurts.  In fact I check my email before leaving for work only.  At least my thankless job dulls the pain from an early morning pinhead letter.  Compared even to my pacing, work is dull. I recall reading Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton.  I read it before I saw the movie.  I think of the scene where the ve...

As a self-taught writer, I frequently second-guess myself.  (Funny phrase, second-guess.)  I don’t know what’s normal, so when I receive a rejection note, I suppose the problem must be with me, not with the place I’m seeking to publish. I have a friend who is an editor.  He tells me that if a work has promise, he’ll advise the author to revise and resubmit.  This shows that there’s something worth pursuing, and it is only if it fails to impress the critics two times around that it is passed altogether. In the fiction publishing world, I’ve received a revise and resubmit suggestion only twice (both from Jersey Devil Press ).  The first time the editor really like what I was doing and worked with me to get it into the form he wanted.  The second time they turned down the revised piece and haven’t published me since. It is my usual practice, after a piece is rejected, to rewrite.  As my writing partner Elizabeth says, in a byte of inter...

I often wonder how many people read my stuff.  That’s the thing about the World-Wide Web.  You’ll never know.  Hits, yes, may be counted.  But who really reads? My writing is metaphorical.  Unapologetically so.  To gather by past responses, this is not a popular or desirable thing.  It is, however, what I do.  I began publishing fiction in 2009.  (I’ve been writing fiction since the 1970s.)  Rejections fell like rain. Over the past month, strangely, there have been a few more open editors.  I feel confused.  Within a three-week period I had acceptances from Dali’s LoveChild (an excellent new surrealist literary magazine) and Deep Water  (a more established, darker venue).  I even had a maybe from Defenestration . I’m a realist, despite my fiction.  I know many more rejections will come.  I still regularly get them.  I submitted a truly creepy story to a magazine that was rejected in less t...

It was one of the nicest rejection letters I’ve received.  “It’s not you.  It’s me.”  You get the picture.  I’ve lost track of how many times this book has been rejected.  A friend of mine in publishing tells me that publishers are hungry for content.  I’ve got six pretty good novels lying around with very little interest shown. Perhaps I suck as a writer.  I don’t really think so, though.  You see, i read a lot.  On the order of three hours a day a lot.  Some of what I read sucks.  I recognize suckiness.  I don’t produce it. And yet when I submit to a publisher they want three months to consider my work before rejecting it.  You’d think I’d have learned the lesson by now.  If they don’t write back the next day, so excited they can’t stay in their seats, I’ve failed to sway them.  At least that’s how I imagine it must go. This particular novel—the first I’ve seriously tried to publish—is an orphan....

A writer’s life is one of introspection and self-doubt.  There’s nothing like the ratio of rejection slips to acceptance emails to drive home the message that somehow your words are defective, your thoughts substandard, your ideas puerile.  Then a miracles happens.  A small miracle. It was a bleary-eyed Monday morning.  I hadn’t even bothered checking my email for a few days, sometimes trembling at the very thought.  Some days there’s only so much criticism I can take.  But this was something good. On a whim I entered a story in Calliope ’s annual writing contest.  This story had been rejected a total of seven times, but I believed in it.  Calliope is associated with Mensa, and I had an intelligent subtext to the tale—my stories are never about what they seem to be.  I sent it in and tried to forget it. The forgetting part worked, for the most part.  Daily life attempts to drown my writing hour from time to time.  Most...

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 mined fro...

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...

I received a very nice rejection letter today.  The editor had nothing but nice things to say about my story.  Oh, and, I won’t be publishing it.  By my count, that makes thirty different literary magazines (some more literary than others) that have rejected my work.  The unnamed editor advised me to try simultaneous submissions because publication is a “numbers game.” Perhaps my skin is too thin to be a writer.  I think about writing all day long.  As soon as I wake up—literally.  I’m writing before five minutes have passed from eye-opening.  On my way to work (sometimes at work), on my way home from work.  As I drift off to sleep, I am thinking about my stories.  It is, in brief, my life. I read a lot too.  Some of what I read is shit.  I try to refrain from harsh words, but some people succeed in writing who should be condemned to the slush pile hell I inhabit most of the time.  I get enough encouraging reject...

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...

I’ve been talking to my friend Steve about rejection.  You see, the constant stream of rejection letters for someone trying his damnedest to be heard is felt by both editors and authors.  Mostly authors. Steve has a blog, Sects and Violence in the Ancient World , that used to get nearly a thousand hits a day.  Now he barely gets a hundred.  Perhaps the world of the internet has already grown weary of what he has to say. For my part, every few months I get brave and lob three or four stories to literary magazines and sit back to wait for the rejection letters to roll in.  I’ve had six short stories published.  All but two were first rejected before someone else saw a little value or entertainment in them. I’m told that writers must have thick skin.  I also know that I put an awful lot of myself into my stories.  Yes, rejection is personal.  It can be nothing else. Even Vagabondage Press, who will be publishing my Passion of t...