K. Marvin Bruce

I can’t help it.  Inside every man there’s locked a puerile little boy.  The other day I was on the website of the Catholic University of America.  As everyone knows, Catholics have some of the greatest hangups about sexuality in all of Christendom.  Like most universities, however, CUA has to appeal to both genders to make ends meet. In any case, I was looking over the undergraduate programs for a friend and the head picture struck me as impossibly funny.  All the more so because it was totally unintentional.  Over the past few years institutions of higher education have been using plenty of photos of coeds to attract the guys.  That’s just the way it is. In this photo, however, the two women have inscrutable smiles on their faces as one makes the universal “inches” sign with her fingers.  It doesn’t help that there’s a guy sitting right there, not looking their way.  On the blackboard behind, although blurry, is the word “tube....

A writer I know—an actual, published one!—once said he’d never write a sex scene.  I can respect that.  Plenty of classics have, at best, innuendo.  Still, other texts, going back to the Bible and beyond have sex scenes. I read about writing.  Experts say that readers want stories that will help them cope with issues they face.  We all face sexual issues, whether we face them as asexuals, curious sexuals, or hyper-sexuals.  Many modern novels have sex scenes to make them more realistic.  Or lucrative. Although much of my writing is a kind of horror, the stories often involve sexual insecurities.  There are few other areas in life where we make ourselves so vulnerable.  A lot of people, I think, get hurt. There’s part of the dilemma of the sex scene right there.  It reveals an awful lot about the writer.  I grew up as an asexual.  I didn’t date until my junior year of college, if you can even call what I did then da...

The success of a friend felt personal.  Well, perhaps “friend” is too strong a word, but I feel a natural camaraderie with other writers.  He’s a guy I know from work.  We occasionally share projects, and I had no idea that he was a fiction writer.  Until his novel published. As I sent him a congratulatory email, a strange thought occurred to me.  We rely on publishers to get out hard-won efforts out to a reading public, and yet, the relationship often feels adversarial. It’s almost like the publisher is the enemy to writers.  We who seriously write know that we have something to offer.  We pour ourselves into our words, laying ourselves naked for the world to criticize.  And we’re told not to take rejection personally. Is it possible to stand naked before someone only to have that person turn away and walk out and not to take it personally?  Editors and Judas Iscariot.  What a team. As a writer, I read a lot....

I know a real, live, tenured professor who believes in tulpa.  He once told me how a friend wrote a fiction story, only to have an improbable event from the story happen after it was finished.  It was not something over which he had any control. Tulpa is a concept from eastern religions that suggests a being of pure thought or imagination might take on reality.  Writers, who create characters all the time, are perhaps engaging in tulpa.  We are creating, literally, as well as figuratively. I like the concept.  Many writers know the sensation of the character who refuses to behave.  A person that you make up does not what you want her to do, but what you know she shouldn’t do.  It’s like having an adult two-year-old. This same professor friend once told me that ideas may be created by a collective consciousness, and writers are those sensitive enough to capture those ideas that are floating freely in the ether.  (To be fair, he didn’t ...

Writers explore the depths of humanity’s experience.  At the same time, there are topics that we aren’t allowed to plumb. Let me back up a bit.  When I started to teach myself about which literary magazines would accept what kinds of stories, I spent a lot of time reading the do’s and don’t’s of the editors.  Some won’t allow men to write with a woman’s voice or vice versa.  Others disallow sex scenes and some forbid topics without which Nabokov could never have written Lolita .  Write short, still others say, anything over 1000 words is too long. Being a compliant sort, I tried for a while to avoid those things that would get me into trouble.  When someone is established, however, I’ve noticed, they can break all the rules and get rich.  So why are topics forbidden? I know editors.  A good friend is one.  And editors are people with tastes and prejudices just like the rest of us.  The problem is, there are a limited number ...

Writing is kind of like sex.  It feels wonderful, but it is really difficult to manage with someone watching you.  I live in a small place, with a partner.  I have to get up very early to write, before my significant other is awake. Even if someone is not paying attention, but is in the same room, I can’t perform.  Writing is a solitary activity.  Tricky for those of us who can’t afford a house, or at least a large apartment. My writing partner Fantasia asked me recently if I have a special place.  Ever since reading Little Women many years ago, I’ve often thought about the habits of writers.  I’ve never had enough money to afford a domicile with a special place.  I don’t have a study or den.  I have a chair that I favor in the living room. This chair affords me a view of all other rooms without doors in my apartment.  I can see if anyone else can see me.  If a door is open.  If I am not alone.  I really want...

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...