Reading time: About 2 minutes
Isabella Wang says she originally thought one successful publication was the finish line — but now she understands it was only the beginning…
Isabella Wang is the author of November, November (Nightwood 2025), Pebble Swing (Nightwood, 2021), a finalist for the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize, and the chapbook On Forgetting a Language (Baseline Press, 2019). She is the founder and director of the Phoenix Poetry Prize.
I was excited to talk to Isabella about how she approaches writing.
Q. Roughly how much time do you spend writing every day?
I live with chronic health conditions that make it hard for me to have a set writing practice every day, since I don’t know what my body’s capacity will be like each day when I wake up. I am always immersed in literature though; I work at a bookstore, and I am always reading for current book projects I’m researching, and I think that feeds into my days.
Q. What’s a simple activity or habit that makes you a better writer?
Listening to audiobooks. During the worst of my health, I couldn’t read books physically, and still struggle to sometimes. I learned to be a better listener via audiobooks.
Q. What interferes with your writing?
My health, paying the bills, stable housing, the little moments that break my heart and soul…
Q. How do you persuade yourself to sit down to write on days when you really, really DON’T feel like doing it?
Honestly, I simply don’t write when I don’t feel like it. I often tell people that a big learning curve for me was learning to discern the difference between procrastination and burnout.
Q. Is there a particular motto or saying that you’ve found helpful for writing?
Just do a little bit. Break a big task down into little ones and do a little bit of those.
Q. Which stage of the writing process do you enjoy the most: researching, writing or editing/rewriting and why?
Publication, the book parties and celebrations and launches and festivals when the hard part, the writing, is all over. Lol.
Q. What’s one of the best books you’ve read (either fiction or non) in the last five years?
Minelle Mahtani’s May it Have a Happy Ending and Siddhartha Mukherjee’s The Emperor of All Maladies.
Q. What book are you reading right now?
Harriet Lye’s Natural Killer.
Q. What do you think is the biggest misperception that new writers have about the act of writing?
When I started out, I thought that I just had to get one successful publication, and that to me seemed like the finish line. When in fact, it was just the very beginning, although that first publication is very exciting indeed.
