The Way We Write: Interviews with Award-winning Writers

New
Paperback
2007
$29.64

This book is a unique collection of new interviews with award-winning writers - novelists, poets, playwrights, screenplay writers and children's writers. Each writer discusses their process, both mental and physical: why they write, whom they write for, where and how often they write, recurring themes, their problems and their achievements. The interviews are intimate, personal, honest, informative, intriguing and often humorous. Together, they offer a fascinating insight into the inspiration, experience and hard work behind successful writers. This engaging collection is sure to appeal to anyone who loves reading or has ever wanted to be a writer.

Synopsis

This book is a unique collection of new interviews with award-winning writers - novelists, poets, playwrights, screenplay writers and children's writers. Each writer discusses their process, both mental and physical: why they write, whom they write for, where and how often they write, recurring themes, their problems and their achievements. The interviews are intimate, personal, honest, informative, intriguing and often humorous. Together, they offer a fascinating insight into the inspiration, experience and hard work behind successful writers. This engaging collection is sure to appeal to anyone who loves reading or has ever wanted to be a writer.

$29.64

Quantity

10 in stock

More Information

Format: Paperback
Pages: 256
Edition: New Ed
Publisher: Continuum International Publishing Group Ltd.
Published: 01 May 2007
ISBN 10: 0826495052
ISBN 13: 9780826495051

Media Reviews

'This book will serve as an inspiration to anyone interested in writing.' - The Good Book Guide
' Writing says the American novelist Joyce Carol Oates in her contribution to this collection is a kind of dreaming. By which she means that for her writing is, like dreaming, a real necessity. We need to dream to sort out our thoughts; we can't choose not to dream, just as good writers can't choose not to write. In this fascinating collection eighteen good writers - they have all won awards - share with us, some with astonishing frankness, not just their working methods and how and when they find they write best, but what they see as their own strengths and weaknesses. They tell us about the hard graft of correction and re-writing and whose opinions they value, and they share with us the pleasure of knowing finally that they've got it right. It is as Al Alvarez and children's writer Eleanor Updale admit, often a desperately solitary occupation. In the end it is all about something disarmingly simple, as the poet U.A. Fanthorpe points out - trying to get the words right. From each of these writers we learn a great deal, and in eighteen different ways we are, in their company, thoroughly entertained.' - Sue MacGregor, A Good Read, BBC Radio 4
'There are of course wonderful insights into particular novels, poems and plays, but what is most important about these interviews is the proximity they give us to the writing process. There really is no better way to understand the author's art and craft than by listening to him or her reflect on the imagination's journey to the page: the starting points, the struggles, decisions and revisions. And the tremendous variety of accounts within this particular book is important in itself, making clear that there are many paths to success. Barbara Baker is to be congratulated on eliciting these telling contributions from so many of our best-known authors.' - Paul Munden, Director of the National Association of Writers in Education

Author Bio

Barbara Baker's previous books include Let the Credits Roll: Interviews with Film Crew (McFarland & Company, 2003) and Why We Garden: Stories of a British Obsession (Aston House Press, 2004).