K. Marvin Bruce

Every day in Trump’s America the line between fiction and fact becomes effaced.   Not that that’s any excuse for neglecting my fiction, in fact it seems as good a reason as any to press on with it.   I’ve got a non-fiction book under contract and that keeps me away from my mistress Muse in the “fake news” world. It’s too bad, really.   I’ve got a seventh novel well under way and I’ve got a potential publisher considering one (at last) for publication.   The thing is, for a man being published is about the closest you can come to giving birth.   Months of gestation, after having seeds planted inside, and perhaps then you have something to say.   Something that will grow up beautiful. As someone who has written literally millions of words, I’m always amazed at how difficult it is to find others who want to read them.   The internet’s a crowded place.   My daily commute to and from work forces me offline for a few hours a day, and it i...

Stress can be great for writing.   Having too little time to practice the craft, in some odd way, makes it flow more easily.   Take the case of the working writer on vacation. I sometimes feel bold enough to call myself a writer.   My job doesn’t depend on it, of course, but who finds meaning in their job?   My sense of purpose comes in the off hours.   Nevertheless, each day presents minimal opportunities to spend with my true vocation.   Then comes vacation time. Unstructured days spread out before me like a trail of breadcrumbs through the forest.   I have stories I’ve been working on for months.   I have at least two non-fiction projects going as well.   At last I will have long, open days when writing will flow and I’ll live in the gooey comfort of constant inspiration.   As if such things ever happen. Vacation is family time.   Writers—those of us who live alone in our heads—can’t simply separate ourselves f...

Being a working writer means living with inherent contradictions.  For fifty weeks of the year daily life involves awaking between 3:00 and 3:30 a.m., writing for half an hour, and catching a bus to over eight hours of work in New York City.  Then riding the bus back home again in time for supper and bed.  I’m not complaining, just observing.  That’s what writers do. That lifestyle—constantly tired, anxious, and pressed for time to get the mundane chores done (paying bills, balancing the checkbook, taking out the recycling)—wears me down like a grindstone.  When the weekend comes I sleep an extra half hour or so and, although refreshed, I awake without the urgency that frames five days a week.  It’s a crisis. Every year I save up enough vacation days to take off between Christmas and New Year’s.  As a former professor this is a no-brainer.  In my industry (publishing) there’s no such thing as an emergency.  Nobody dies if a book is r...

Keeping to a schedule, I’ve always found, helps me to remain steady in my writing.  A creature of the early morning, I awake when the majority in my time zone slumber, and try to capture my thoughts with this net call literacy.  I try to do it daily, but the desire to sleep is great, and weekends invariably find me cheating. Then there’s travel.  Even fictional people need vacation.  Indeed, travel is one of the greatest sources of literary inspiration.  Seeing something out of the ordinary, talking to people you seldom see, throwing your concept of morning and night off by several hours.  These things can be an alternate form of consciousness. I try to blog on schedule.  This, as most of my literary endeavors, is subject to a kind of profound failure at times.  Life gets in the way—wonderfully in the way—of writing.  It is always my hope, though, that at the end of it all, I’ll be able to scribble it all down. My current t...