Black Fox Literary Magazine Issue #9

BF: You not only write poetry, but also fiction and nonfiction. How does your writing process differ for each outlet? What are the similarities?

RA: I do. I write poems, essays, and I’ve written two novels—and if I decide to write another one of those you can just put me out of my misery when you see me typing a title page. I have absolutely no talent for plot. All my conflicts are internal. The mere suggestion of face-to-face confrontation gives me the vapors. So, that’s a problem, isn’t it! I’m like Virginia Woolf, in that respect: I write situations rather than plots. In every other way, though, I’m no Virginia Woolf, though wouldn’t that be lovely? Except for the stones-in-the-pockets thing. Still, I learned a great deal from writing those books; I learned what I can and can’t do, for starters. I began the first novel because I’d published short stories and an agent told me if I had a novel he’d consider taking me on. Four years later, when I’d finished it, he did not take me on. But another saint of an agent did, and darned if she didn’t get the book published.

She still has the second novel and can’t give it away. It’s weird because it’s a much better book than the first, but, eh.

The market is not generous these days, and I’m hardly a young, hip, marketable personality. And I’m actually fine with that which sort of surprises me. I do suffer from a serious case of reality. Writing it was, nevertheless, valuable experience.

The essays, as I said, are generated by ideas. I get the equivalent of an earworm, let’s call it a brainworm, and I obsess. Almost everything I see after that seems to somehow connect, to be somehow related to it. The brainworm primes me for associations. Most of my essays are hybrids: essay/reviews, critical/personal, or simply personal essays that involve some sort of research or exploration. Some, I think, are very funny; some not so much. I love writing essays. I’m dying to write some lyric 144