Do you use a pseudonym? Why or why not?
I do not use one. I'm Patrick W. Marsh. There are others, and I do believe there is an amphibian sanctuary with my name on it somewhere down south, but I decided to go by it with all my writing. I wanted to embrace the stuff I write, and be as close to it as possible. Creating another name seemed dishonest to my experience and motivations as a writer. Also, I don't want to hide from what I create. I make, examine, and illuminate monsters in fiction, poetry, and nonfiction. I study them and watch them interact. I love what I do. I wouldn't want to remove that degree of separation.

What first motivated you to write/create art?
I discovered through storytelling that you could captivate an audience and I could express my identity through narrative. I haven't felt seen or accepted for most of my life, and writing gave me a spotlight on my individual identity. My very own haunted mirror I could reflect back at the world. So I started writing in high school and haven't looked back. Writing about monsters always resonated with me. I always wondered and almost appreciated how honest they seemed to their environment. How at odds they were with their own reality. What was their backstory and why were they even here? I'm still pursuing those answers. 

If you could have any writer/artist, living or dead, as a mentor, who would you choose?
This is a fantastic question and I have no clue. Especially because I assume most of my picks would be terrible mentors since they were at odds with themselves. I would for certain raid the graveyard of American poets; Robert Frost, Emily Dicknson, Langston Hughes, and Wallace Stevens are immediate choices. Ray Bradbury would be another one maybe. I think I would go with poets though. Sylvia Plath, Seamus Heaney, and Pablo Neruda are also possibilities. 

Is there a specific period of history whose art or writing you admire? Why?
This is a really odd answer, or at least I feel a bit self-conscious about it. My answer would be in gaming, and I would focus on the video games released by Squaresoft in the 1990's. They're the studio that invented Final Fantasy, Secret of Mana, Chrono Trigger, among many other legendary JRPGs. Now, in these games the narrative was so diction heavy and literature-esque, it felt like I was acting out classical texts by playing them. These games were fiction, but the characters were incredibly human and they taught me that even in speculative genres you could have emotional resonance with your audience. Humanity reaches across genres, and these classic JRPGs taught me that as I played them. Also they had fantastic monsters. A whole nightmare rainbow. 

Is there one part of your creation process that’s harder for you?
Editing. I don't like it. I don't like doing it. I find it to be both masochistic and self-indulgent. However, it is absolutely necessary and stimulates the most growth you can find as a writer. Refining your editing process, or, gasp, editing your editing, is a worthwhile pursuit. I think a lot of mistakes young writers make is undervaluing this process. However, it sucks and it's hard. I hate it. 

Talk about the moment you knew you wanted to be a creator.
The moment I tore through my mother's embryonic sac I snatched the doctor's pen out of his pocket. Actually, I'm not quite sure. I think it was in high school when I could submit work to our student-run literary magazine. My story, the Nodachi, got published. Also, getting my own blog and being able to release content on my own terms back in the early days of blogspot. The advent and explosion of self-publishing was also a factor for me. It made creating books feel closer to me, something anyone could do potentially.

Do you have a piece that you created early in your career that makes you cringe? Will you ever go back and fix it so it can be submitted somewhere?
I think my first book Beware the Ills is still pretty troubling for my mind. I've revised it a bunch of different times. I feel confident about it. I love the book to pieces, but I'm still self-conscious about it. I think with that first book you put so much of your soul into it, you feel vulnerable. It is like being in a relationship. You have to let yourself out there to be understood, but you don't know how the person, or in this case the audience will react. You open yourself up to an interaction, and you hope you've communicated clearly and effectively, but with a book there is a lot of room for error. 

What is your biggest creative doubt?
Oof. This is a whopper of a question. I would say I don't have a specific doubt, but I have a feeling that hits me whenever I start a new poem, story, blog post, or book. It is like the uncertainty of freedom that writing provides for me is a bit immobilizing. I feel lost in my own possibilities. I have all the freedom in the world to create my own story, but that void of the empty page is also intimidating. So I guess my abstract answer to this question is the inherent doubt that comes with creation. You don't know what you will create, nor if it will be consumable or digestible. You build a world from atoms and electrons out of digital ink and notebook paper. It is difficult but wondrous. The terror of complete possibility.

What piece of creative advice have you received that sounded good, but was ultimately not useful to you?
I've heard a ton of garbage advice for years. Hard to sift through the flotsam at this point. One piece of advice I've heard with writing, or the arts in general, is the idea that if you don't have passion for a project or piece of writing, abandon it. This would be false. Passion can wane with things you love and care about. Energy has seasons. I've written poems I adore only to have zero passion to edit and workshop them. Passion isn't just enough to get through the doubt and work, you have to have stubbornness, routine, and consistency. If you lose passion don't panic, that's just when the work begins. The instant gratification aspect of our culture is reflected in how we approach creative projects. We expect constant lightning and tropical shores, but that isn't the reality of creating art. Sometimes it is work. Sometimes you'll hate it. That, or those moments, are where the growth happens. 

You’re stranded on a desert island — what three creative tools do you want with you?
Black Moleskin Notebook, my curated Pandora playlist of video game music, and a pack of ballpoint pens.