Ask the Author: Marne Wilson
Answered Questions (5)
Marne Wilson
It may be cheating, since it didn't start out in a book, but I want to go to Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood of Make Believe. Although the ruler is often impossible to deal with and the residents don't always agree on the issues of the day, all problems are solved within a week and the weather is almost always perfect. I'd set up some kind of whimsical residence (maybe a disused farm silo or an oversized tin of butter cookies) in the space between the Rock-It factory and the Museum-Go-Round and never leave!
Marne Wilson
Because I'll be attending a poetry workshop at his farm in New Hampshire this summer, I checked out the 600-page Complete Works of Robert Frost from the library. Although I tend to be a completist, I realize there's no way I'll ever read all those poems in one summer, and it would probably scramble my brain if I did! But I've been having fun thumbing through it and stopping at any poem that catches my eye. Certainly there's much more to him than what we learned in school.
Marne Wilson
This was a tough one, since I've read a lot of love stories in my life, but I finally settled on Henry and Clare from The Time Traveler's Wife. Although their life together is often confusing, scattered throughout time as it is, they never stop fighting to be together and learn to make the most of every moment that they have.
Marne Wilson
If you want to be a good writer, first you have to be a good reader. (If you don't genuinely enjoy reading what other people write, I don't know why you want to be a writer anyway.) While it's fine to have favorites that you come back to, don't got locked into one narrow genre of reading. People often tell me that my work is unusual or surprising, and I think that's because I've read so voraciously across genre and disciplinary lines. The more diverse material your mind has to work on, the more likely that you'll come up with something uniquely your own, rather than something that sounds like a pale imitation of your favorite writers.
Marne Wilson
The great thing about being a poet as opposed to a fiction writer is that there's no pressure on me to generate words every day unless I genuinely have something to say. When I was a newer poet, I used to try to force myself to write poems even when I didn't feel like it, and the results were so dreadful that I quickly gave this up as a waste of time. Now I usually wait for inspiration to strike.
Occasionally, I still feel like I've gone too long without writing anything, and then I start worrying that I'll never be inspired again. When this happens, I make an effort to read more good poetry that I enjoy, and that usually gets the juices flowing.
Occasionally, I still feel like I've gone too long without writing anything, and then I start worrying that I'll never be inspired again. When this happens, I make an effort to read more good poetry that I enjoy, and that usually gets the juices flowing.
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