Awaking Elsewhere

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 trip was beset by bad weather, excessive early rising, cancelled flights, and a day-long drive across an unfamiliar state. All this to end up at a place where I suck in inspiration like oxygen and in which I have based several of my stories. It’s far from home. I’m not in control here. My schedule is not my own and the thoughts I have are ricocheted off those of others. I’m traveling.

Like my devices, I too experience battery drain. Often I wish I could take a week or two off work just to write. When I get that week off, however, I travel. And travel and writing can have trouble cohabiting, it seems. As much as they love one another, they don’t always get along.

So it is that I’m trying to stay on schedule with this little blog. I may not get the words down as they occur, but this foreign, familiar place I find myself has always proven an inspiration before. Good thing it’s not a crime to think and drive.

Comments

Dusty

My, this thing is dusty. My fans—hi, Mom!—perhaps believe me to have perished in the pandemic. No, it was nonfiction’s fault. Since the pandemic began I’ve had two nonfiction books published and have written a third. With a nine-to-five job something’s got to give. Unfortunately it’s been fiction. Well, the groundhog didn’t see his shadow yesterday, so it must be safe to come out. I shuffled away the rejection notes and began submitting again. I’ve got a backlog of weird stories and maybe some new publishers have emerged? The thing is, don’t you just hate it when you’re in the mood to submit and some lit journal has its window for submissions firmly shut? My last story, “ The Hput, ” was published about three years ago. Oh, I’ve submitted since then, but with no traction. Well, it is winter. I’ve got a lot of stories lined up. I’ve been sending them out again, dreaming of making a dime at what I love doing best. When you’ve been writing for half a century, you l

Too Much Writing?

Has this ever happened to you? Have you written a story that you’ve completely forgot? Not only completely forgotten, but made unfindable? I play games with my stories and sometimes the joke’s on me. Okay, I suffer from graphomania. I write constantly. I do try to keep organized—I use a spreadsheet that has all my submissions on it. It has rejection/acceptance dates (mostly rejection). Lots of information. I decided to list on it every story, whether finished or in process. There are far too many (mostly in process). When I finish a story I often submit it. If I get burned, I’m shy about resubmitting. I often rewrite at this stage. Then, when I feel brave enough, I try again. The spreadsheet is color-coded. There, in the color that indicates finished and ready to submit is a story cryptically titled “The Password.” I don’t remember this story. I can’t recall what it was about or why I thought it was ready to publish. Looking through my electronic files,

Gothica

The other day I asked a friend to define “gothic.” Heavy, dark, supernatural—these were a few of the words suggested. When autumn comes my thoughts turn gothic, and I’m always looking for good gothic things to read. I have blogged in the past about how reading literature that isn’t great is good. I’m serious about that. You can learn a lot by reading poor writing. Some gothic literature is more the former than the latter. Like Dark Shadows novels. Dark Shadows was running on daytime television when I was a child. As a teen I began to read the novelizations, by Marilyn Ross, whenever I could find them. Belles lettres they’re not. Gothic, most decidedly so. That’s why I keep coming back to them. They aren’t scary. In fact, they’re formulaic and predictable. But so, so gothic. Spooky mansions, the Maine woods, forlorn vampire, faded wealth. Even, yes, dark shadows. The stories create a mood I find difficult to locate elsewhere. Inspired by the most r

K. Marvin Bruce

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