K. Marvin Bruce

I’m not a wealthy man.  In fact, I’m barely middle class.  I do, however, have occasion to stay in hotels from time to time.  When you’re young, comfort doesn’t seem to matter as much as price, so I stayed in Motel 6 or Super 8 whenever possible. There’s something evocative about cheap hotels.  You know all kinds of things have happened in these thin-walled rooms with their heavily used furniture.  It depends on how far your imagination is willing to go. When I attend professional meetings, however, and the company is paying the bill, I stay in conference hotels.  These are a cut above.  They always make me feel like writing.  That hint of aristocratic luxury in the air suggests something slightly askew.  Some obscure haunting.  The sins of the indolent rich. As paradoxical as life is, such hotels make writing difficult.  I’m not in my usual writing chair at home.  I can’t get comfortable in all this luxury.  Although I’m surrounded by the memories suffused into the

Sometimes work gets in the way of life.  Although I manage to write for a few minutes every day, sometimes I’m so distracted that the words are sluggish, like heavily polluted water.  At such times, I rely on other authors to help me through. I recently read Paula Hawkins’ The Girl on the Train .  I wasn’t sure what to expect because I try not to read reviews before I start a book.  To be honest, I don’t often read bestsellers.  Still, as I’ve come to realize, if I want people to read what I write, I have to write like what people read. It’s no accident, I suppose, that my favorite writers are often people who’ve struggled while they were alive.  Struggled either making it in general, or struggled to be recognized in their writing.  Ignored by the mainstream, they became classics after they died. The Girl on the Train is a fast read, and the story is well told.  Rachel makes a great unreliable narrator.  Still, I had the sense, as I did with Andy Weir’s The Martian, that

I was recently reading a piece by a New York Times best-selling author.  It was a bit discouraging.  Best-sellers, he noted, are often decided on the basis of hundreds, not thousands, of sales.  The book-buying public is small. Reading, this author averred, is hard work.  Most people would rather watch TV or surf the net.  Anything but read. My friend Steve works in the publishing industry.  He told me once that studies show only about 5% of the US population buys books.  While that’s a low percent, it is a high enough number to keep the industry going.  Still, it does make it harder for writers. A publishing industry feeling stressed will try more and more for “a sure thing” rather than to take a chance on something new.  The runaway success of Andy Weir’s  The Martian and Paula Hawkins’s The Girl on the Train —both passed by major houses as too outré until they started making money—show that editors often have no idea what people like. Those who write for comm

Autumn is the ideal time for writers.  At least in the opinion of this struggling author.  The mood is just right for inspiration.  Even the mention of Halloween brings delightfully creepy images to mind, and other doleful delicacies. This September, however, finds me in a tangle of non-fiction.  Hoping against hope to divine the correct alchemy to get creative writing published, I’ve been putting efforts toward my non-fiction tome.  It’s not a fall book.  It’s a quotidian book. Like all my work, it is built from scratch.  Watching the word count at the bottom of the page is like trying to watch and hour hand move on a clock with continuous motion.  I feel like I’ve said so much already, but the industry standard “book length” hasn’t yet been reached. Meanwhile, I’m itching, aching even, to write my usual gloomy autumnal fiction. How long is a book supposed to be?  There’s no right answer to that, of course.  A few years ago there was a book published called some

Most writers give this advice to those of us who wish to join the guild: read.  Read lots.  Read constantly. While it’s not always possible to read all the time, I do spend at least a couple hours most days behind a book.  I know not everyone likes to read, but I read a tremendous number of books.  Of course I don’t keep count, but the total is in the thousands rather than the hundreds. When you read, you learn.  Yes, I read for entertainment, but I also learn at the same time.  I learn how to write.  And how not to write.  I learn what works, and what doesn’t.  I love to read. An ethical issue has been nagging me.  Aren’t those who read required, if so enabled, to give something back?  If there’s anything I enjoy more than reading, it’s writing.  I could write until I drop dead with no regrets. It is my obligation, is it not, to offer back some of what I’ve taken?  I’ve borrowed ideas, thoughts, and dreams from other writers.  Don’t I owe to readers a synthesis of wha

Fiction or non-fiction?  Maybe it’s both/and rather than either/or.  The line between the two is thin. Lately I’ve been working on a large, creative non-fiction project.  I’ve still got a novel out for consideration (as it has been almost continuously for half a decade now), but there’s a true-to-life story that’s got its talons in me. I’m not a post-modern writer, but I am a post-modern person.  I believe, in other words, that true objectivity is beyond human beings.  If that’s the case, facts are invented and not discovered.  Histories are interpretations—not what actually happened.  Fact sounds like it’s become fiction. My post-modernism breaks down when it comes to writing.  Fiction is narrative.  I’ve tried to read post-modern novels and I always end up frustrated and confused.  I want a story to follow.  Preferably a moody one. Now, the non-fiction post-modernist would say that both fiction and non may indeed be called “true.”  Truth is a matter of interpre

I’ve started to feel it in the air.  Just a tiny bit.  Mostly when I’m outside in the early morning.  While we’re still getting days in the 90’s around here, I sense the slow approach of fall.  A moodiness comes over me that is melancholy and beautiful all at the same time. Ever since I was a child I’ve felt this.  My breath catches in my throat and a strange, sad rapture fills my chest.  Things look a little darker, more foreboding.  This is not violence, but perhaps the distant threat of it.  It’s subtle, poignant, and absolutely exquisite. I’ve stood outside and breathed deeply in the autumn and fleetingly thought that should I die at that moment there would be not the least regret.  It’s a little scary, yes, like Halloween, but not like a slasher movie.  This is the atmosphere I try to capture in many of my stories. Each person is different, I know.  There are those who enjoy the warmth and brightness of summer.  Or the erupting promise of spring.  The cold bleakness o

Is it possible to write too much?  I remember asking a famous scholar once about something he had written.  He couldn’t remember it.  In his defense he said, “You know, you write so much.” I’m not a young man, and I think I’m finally starting to see what he meant.  In addition to this blog, I write another under my actual name.  I’ve been doing for about six years.  The other day I recalled a somewhat funny thing I’d written (or so it seemed to me) but I couldn’t find it. I tried searching the blog with every possible keyword I could imagine.  Nothing helped.  I couldn’t remember what I was writing about, or even the exact wording of the phrase.  It was a powerful image, though, and I wanted to find it.  Even in these days of “lasers in the jungle” you can’t find a phrase when you need to. Maybe the problem is I write too much.  I write every day.  I pretty much have since I was a teenager.  My advice to younger writers is always the same: write every day.  Even if i