K. Marvin Bruce

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 a special place. In grade school we had an assignment

One of my friends is an established author.  He has appeared on the New York Times bestseller list multiple times although he isn’t really a household name.  He writes big books.  Some topping a thousand pages.  He won’t compromise. On my nightstand at the moment is a first novel of some four hundred pages.  Prior to it, several of my last bedtime projects involved first books of similar or greater size.  Big books.  Something into which you could sink your teeth. Pardon the cliche. Recently some literate friends were saying how much they love descriptive writing.  Thing is, description takes word counts.  Like most writers struggling to find publishers, one of the first obstacles I face is reflected in the adage “write short to write long.” Implied witticism aside, this can be a problem.  I’m the first to admit that stories of my own that I’ve pruned down often appear better for the effort.  To bring some more complex ideas down to size, however, ruins the story.  In a

“Infatuation, Technically,” was technically published on the Danse Macabre blog this past week.  This brief tale evolved out of experience working in a office where women are as difficult to get to know as they are arresting.  But the story isn’t really about that. If it weren’t for technology I wouldn’t be a published author (if what I can be called is such).  I make my submissions online and I receive my electronic voice online.  I look at maps online and I haven’t touched a phonebook in years. But still.  I’m still not convinced all of this technology is a good thing.  “Infatuation, Technically” is about the love of technology.  The human element is gone.  I could be dating a clone and wouldn’t even know it.  This food I’m eating never occurred in nature.  That fly buzzing around my head is a drone. A friend told me they are now printing cells with 3-D printers.  What if we haven’t found all the dimensions yet?  What if we live in a five dimensional world?  What of thos

I write for mood.  This was an epiphany I had this week.  I started writing long before I started reading about writing.  What I wrote reflected who I’d been reading—mostly Edgar Allan Poe and Ray Bradbury. Contemporary writing gurus indicated that we should cut to the chase.  The modern attention span isn’t comfortable with the building of mood.  They keep a finger on the mouse at all times, my friend, ready to click off your page if a yawn even starts. And this sickness has infected editors.  We want the quick fix.  Wham, bam, thank you, ma’am.  Literary foreplay is so twentieth century.  And the millennia before that.  The earliest recorded stories, like the Gilgamesh Epic, are repetitive and build to the action slowly.  We don’t have time for that any more. Many hours of my childhood were whiled away behind a Ray Bradbury collection of stories.  Some were little more than prose tone poems, but they were beautiful and transformative.  I read them because they were a lit