K. Marvin Bruce

Maybe you’ve noticed it too.   You finish a story and you’re impressed.   It came together better than you had imagined it would.   You might’ve even surprised yourself with how nicely it fell into place. Excitedly, you send it to publisher after publisher.   In their various polite ways of writing pinhead letters, you know you see something they can’t.   You start rewriting.   Changing things.   Some carpentry here.   Some cosmetic surgery there.   Better now? Once again they yawn and say no.   This just doesn’t interest or excite them.   They’re looking for something you just haven’t got.   Meanwhile, you’ve marred your original piece, the one that spoke to you in a way that made you certain you had something to share. After a while you turn to other things, leaving it in your drawer of unpublished gems.   I read a biography of L. Ron Hubbard once—don’t worry, I’m not a Scientologist.   Hubbard...

After a story is rejected from a literary magazine—a rather frequent occurrence—I always revise it.  For stories rejected half a dozen or more times—a rather frequent occurrence—the stories can shift substantially.   In a version of the old saw that “this is the axe used by George Washington to chop down the cherry tree; it has had five new handles and three new heads,” I wonder if the story is the same after such revision.  I write in the flush of inspiration.  The story comes to me roughly complete. The literati say “no,” and I assume the fault must be my own.  I knuckle down and start trying to revise to their liking.  The action changes.  The ending changes.  The characters change.  Is it the same story? Is the fault that my addled brain seems to have trouble telling a story someone wants to read?  Is it the curse of an internet that makes writers of anyone with fingers to type?  I started writing fiction four decad...

I seldom get sick.  I’ve been told this is one of the boons of middle age—the maladies of childhood pass and it take more to bring you down.  A swift-moving bug, however, recently caught me and kept me awake all night thinking the end had come. Ironically, I associate being sick with writing.  I was  a sickly child.  Skinny and frail I ended up in the hospital with pneumonia and actually missed a large portion of seventh grade because of recurring bouts of illness.  I attempted to write my first novel in such a febrile state. A science-fiction fan, I began scrawling about a ship at sea attached by some weird creature.  My novel didn’t have much of a plot and my skills were, well, juvenile.  A couple more false starts accompanied me through high school, but few people beyond my two closest friends, knew I wrote. Of course, I don’t have to be sick to write.  In this workaday world, however, a brief illness affords an opportun...

PBS recently reaired (if such a term can still be used) a special on science fiction television. This was in the aftermath of Leonard Nimoy’s death.  On the show Twilight Zone was lauded as being one of the most literate television series ever. They don’t write them like that anymore.  I was a kid in the sixties when the reruns of Twilight Zone were still being shown.  At the time I had no idea who the writers were.  One of them, I learned as an adult, was Richard Matheson. Matheson is best known for his short novel, I Am Legend .  From today’s perspective, the writing isn’t exactly stellar, but the ideas are rich and profound.  "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet,” for example, has stayed with me since I saw it on the Twilight Zone . I’ve been reading some of Matheson’s short stories.  I have no idea how many he wrote during his long life, but as I compare them to some of my own fare, it is clear that we think/thought pretty much alike. ...