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I like to read poetry and fiction, but I can only seem to write poetry. I was wondering if anyone else has a nitch like this? Can a poet write a successful fiction piece and vise versa?

Sometimes it seems that poetry written by a fiction writer is too wordy and has less powerful descriptions. Often times poets who write fiction do not develop the description enough because of the differing styles of writing.

cmjellison wrote:I like to read poetry and fiction, but I can only seem to write poetry. I was wondering if anyone else has a nitch like this? Can a poet write a successful fiction piece and vise versa?

Sometimes it seems that poetry written by a fiction writer is too wordy and has less powerful descriptions. Often times poets who write fiction do not develop the description enough because of the differing styles of writing.

I am certainly no expert on this subject but I would think that a poet has a tremendous advantage in writing prose fiction which an ordinary novelist does not have. I am currently reading The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zote by David Mitchell (the same author who wrote Cloud Atlas) and his prose is so beautifully written as to approach poetry, which has made my reading of this book all the more enjoyable.

I've never really thought about it before but I would suspect that if a poet were to consider his/her poem in the larger context of what they are trying to say within the poem they could construct a novel from it. For instance, consider Robert Frost's poem, The Road Not Taken. I would think a very good novel could be constructed from this poem, and, borrowing a page from David Mitchell's style of writing one could construct two separate stories within the novel: the first story would be about what would have happened if the person had taken the more traveled road, and the second, about what happened when the protagonist took the "road less traveled by".

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I find that poetry is just a highly structured form of fiction

I'm not very good at poetry. I have a lot of trouble getting the poem to sound good in the same way as other poems. I think it's mostly because I'm not very good at recognizing stresses in words.

I think what you could do (and I'm offering this advice with the full knowledge that I don't know you or your writing habits), is to force yourself to write prose for 30 minutes to 2 hours a day. If poetry comes, it comes, and you should just let it.

The reason I think you're finding it difficult is because once your head starts "thinking" about the words in rhythm and meter, it's difficult to snap out of it. Allow yourself to have little bursts of prose (maybe in the form of vignettes) and see if the ideas flow from there.

Writing prose and fiction requires a lot more planning, analyzing and arranging than poetry--so you have to force yourself to do it at first.

If nothing works, just understand that the universe is telling you to write poems.