K. Marvin Bruce

   So, as I’m bound down by nonfiction—one down, two to go—I’m still working on fiction.   My current project, beyond about a dozen stories ready to submit, is converting one of my published stories into a novel. I’m a self-taught writer.   I’ve never taken a composition class.   I don’t know the conventions of plotting out a story other than by having read many, many books.   I also know that many classic writers of the western canon weren’t trained writers either.   Our society seems to think you have to have a degree to be able to do anything. While I don’t doubt that degrees help, what is missing is the awareness that sometimes writing skill is a gift. Gifts benefit from development, sure.   Today, however, if you majored in something else and you never prospered enough to afford to get that MFA, you’ll find the establishment a struggle.   All of which is to say, I hope I’m doing this right. I’ve written seven novels so far.   A famo...

As the author of six novels (none published) Banned Book Week, which begins tomorrow, always has a special appeal.  People have been writing for over four thousand years, and it might seem that there’s little left to say that won’t offend someone.  So I celebrated Banned Book Week with abandon. There’s no official “western canon” of banned books.  Suffice it to say that if you have a favorite, it’s probably on somebody’s list.  Although we gladly watch televisions shows frothing over with sex and violence, if you try to put it in a book, someone will object.  Loudly. Many cultural heroes, of the literary sort, have spent a stint or two on the banned book lists.  We feel that our children shouldn’t read such things.  They might act out the violence or adult situations and who’s going to clean up after all that?  It is easier to prevent them reading. I recall RIF.  Reading Is Fundamental.  It was a program in full swing when I...