MW: I like writing about people. And though I do that in poetry, too, it's different, more diffuse. I like that there is a world to build and maintain in the novel, and a plot, and characters -- all these huge unwieldy things, that are hard to work with but also fun and challenging.
AC: Do you think that as a poet you have certain strengths that other fiction writers may not have?
MW: As a poet I have something to fall back on when the novel gets too, too tedious! Switching to poetry feels like a dip in a pool sometimes when I am editing fiction...not that it's easier, really, but just that it isn't novel writing. Not that any of this is hard, really, compared to working in a kitchen (my old, old life) or harder forms of labor. Compared to a lot of other things this is all easy...or at least easy in a certain way.
AC: Poets often refer to "poebusiness," the work of publishing your work and marketing yourself as a poet. How is the business of publishing different as a novelist?
MW: I think the fact that you really need an agent as a novelist is the biggest difference. It sounds so glamorous, too, to say "my agent," especially when, as a poet, you are your own agent. There's a lot of freedom in that, probably because there's not as much money at stake, and I find that refreshing. I don't believe you have to "know people" in poetry to get published or win grants, you just do your work and send it out. But with fiction it's a different world and I'm just beginning to learn about it.
AC: Do you have any advice for other poets considering a move to prose?
MW: Have a dear friend who is making the same leap so that when you've written your fifth draft and still haven't found a plot there is someone who will know just what you mean even though she hasn't quite made that same mistake.
It's like taking up a new sport at a late age... you just KNOW you aren't going to be graceful... and I think that's good, really, to be bad at something, to not know how to do something and to stick with it and figure it out.
