K. Marvin Bruce

I recently had a glimpse of a publisher’s handbook to authors.  This was a handbook for academic books.  Not that I ever personally have had use for one, but anyway, curiosity drives feline morbidity.  A great deal of the handbook deals with ebooks. This got me to thinking—since publishers are so beholden to electronic publication, the use of technology is now driving how authors write.  We are being limited by our own devices.  Consider: any books should now be readable via internet, Kindle, Nook, iBook, iPhone, Android, you get the picture.  Many of these platforms have their own programming requirements. I never ran into the word “chunky” in academics before.  To me, chunky is an adjective appropriate to ice cream or peanut butter, not units of text.  I was, of course, wrong. Chunky text is text that keeps information in small blocks.  It allows for skimming, not taking the time to ...

If you’ve ever read any of my stories, I hope that they aren’t the worst you’ve ever seen.    I know individual tastes vary, but those of fiction editors vary maybe a little too much.  Stories written specifically for certain magazines rejected.  The word “subjective” always  slathered on like burn ointment. Sometimes I wonder about the essence of storytelling.  It has changed over time as I found out when my friend Fantasia had to read The Scarlet Letter in high school.  She complained about the overly descriptive narrative that made the plot sometimes hard to follow.  I explained how gothic it was.  Even that didn’t help. No doubt, over time, writing preferences change.  Or should I say reading preferences?  Many of us had to write descriptively in school.  When we carry it over into our fiction we find editors who don’t like our verbosity.  Flash fiction is all the rage in this internet culture of constant cl...

No writer really works in isolation.  Although my favorite time of writing falls daily between 3:30 and 5:00 a.m., I am not alone.  In my head are the many other writers I’ve read, and those from whom I’ve learned my penurious craft.  Today marks the birthday of Franz Kafka, one of my literary heroes. My experience of trying to find publishers has been a kafkaesque trial from time to time.  I learned to write by reading those who’ve written before—Poe, Melville, Austin, Kafka.  Their rich writing, it seems, had a place in a past that no longer exists. Something few editors appreciate is the metaphorical and ironic style of writing I employ.  Anyone who reads Moby-Dick and comes away thinking it is a novel about whaling has no subtlety whatsoever.  To write about life’s great questions, you need a vehicle.  Melville chose a whale, and Kafka chose a bug.  Today, unless your style is flashy and full of sparkly panache, you’ll remain s...