K. Marvin Bruce

Persistence.  A great concept, but a harsh lover.  Writing is a delicate creature, easily crushed by changes in its preferred ecosystem.  I’ve been reminded of this ever since the dreadful event that I entitle the annual time displacement. Daylight savings time had a practical origin in an agricultural lifetime.  Of course, our society has changed radically since then—so much so that there would be no harm in staying on daylight savings time all year long.  To creatures of habit that one extra hour’s sleep in the fall doesn’t compare with the hideous, persistent weeks of uncontrollable yawns in the spring. I’m an early morning writer.  Since I’m not one of the privileged few who gets paid for my efforts, writing has always been an avocation.  Avocations are not viewed favorably by employers, so they are pursuits of personal time.  I think most clearly in the hours before dawn that I jealously guard from others.  I do not want ...

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...

Now that January’s come, and nearly gone, we know the Mayan calendar was wrong.  Not to worry—this is something that any writer knows—the end of the story hasn’t been written yet. I’ve been writing for decades now.  One of the earliest lessons I learned, once I’d turned from short stories to novels (I’ve written several, but The Passion of the Titans is the first to interest a publisher), is that writers are near-sighted.  Oh, I’m not denying that there are visionaries out there, but when I write, I may have a plan for my characters that is never realized.  Like in life, unseen circumstances intervene.  Some writers, I’ve been told, sketch out the storyline ahead of time and know just what is going to happen. Like the Mayan, however, they might be surprised.  At least I am.  I start a novel with an end in mind: my personal 2012.  That end suggests a beginning, for there’s a story here to be told.  The means of getting from th...

One of the few things that truly cause me happiness has just occurred.  I’ve seen my most recent story published.  I’m so happy, I’ll use an exclamation point! Those of you who’ve tried writing know what an accomplishment this is.  You’ve spent your life reading stuff that’s not as good as what you do, and then end each day with a pile of rejection letters so tall that you need a ladder to reach the top.  Just a moment of vindication, and you’re ready to start all over again. My first story published, “O Tannenbaum,” appeared in the online magazine Danse Macabre in December of 2009. It won an award for most macabre Christmas story that year.  Danse Macabre has since become my main squeeze for getting published.  They get it. Recently Jersey Devil Press joined the exclusive club of those who don’t automatically reject whatever I submit.  “Good for the Gander,” the story about a troubling goose attack, appeared this week.  You can r...

In a recent chat with my friend Fantasia she asked how to write about something that doesn’t really catch your interest.  That’s a head-scratcher.  It seems to me that many young writers face having assignments that don’t flow because they are someone else’s idea. Ideas are seldom in short supply.  At any one time I have three or four potential writing repositories on my person, ready to capture any thought that I can cage.  Still, the ideas—often the ones that feel like the best—come when writing or even recording is not an option.  In heavy traffic.  In the shower.  In the dentist’s chair.  At a faculty meeting.  Just before sleep hits in earnest.  (The last two may occur simultaneously.) Life is too full of ideas to have to cater to some instructor’s whims.  Nevertheless, I had to admit to Fantasia that writing what you don’t want to is good exercise.  All writing is good.  That’s not to say that it is all goo...

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...

From the earliest days writers have invented words.  Two of the masters in this art were Shakespeare and Dr. Seuss.  I should, of course, add Lewis Carroll.  Those who live by the word, die by the word.  It seems only fair that they should help create their own means of execution. My writing partner Fantasia and I like to discuss words we’ve invented.  I pepper them into my stories, and since publishers tend to eschew truly creative works, most of the heat is felt by me alone.  It’s truly sad, because, in the most modest way possible, I like to think that some of those words add flavor as well as heat. Some time ago I began keeping a list of invented words I’d used, or intended to use.  Since my stories are about as likely to see publication as the Whig party is to win in 2016, it seems fitting to share a few of my favorites.   One class of made up word I use is the modified real word. An example of this occurs in my story “Ini...