Entering Writers’ Rooms: Reading Interviews with Novelists single work   single work   essay   interview  
Issue Details: First known date: 2017... 2017 Entering Writers’ Rooms: Reading Interviews with Novelists
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description

'This paper examines the literary interview as a form, and as a source of research material for creative writing and literary studies. In the article, I discuss theoretical and methodological approaches to conversations with writers and the usefulness of the interview for creative writing scholars. Novelist Charlotte Wood published The Writer’s Room: Conversations about Writing (2016) soon after her award-winning fifth novel, The Natural Way of Things (2015), appeared; the two books were constructed at around the same time. Through an interview I conducted with Wood about The Writer’s Room and her reasons for speaking to contemporary writers, I assess the statements Wood makes in the introduction to her collection and explore the texture of literary interviews. The article examines what information interviews provide about an individual writer’s working methods and looks at the emotions or affect around authors’ writing lives as a means of gauging the utility of the interview for scholars and writers. I argue that while the apparent aim of the interview is to obtain insights into an author’s praxis, related objectives may be to build connections between authors and their readers, and to augment communities of writers.' (Abstract)

Notes

  • This essay reflects on an interview with Charlotte Wood

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon New Writing vol. 14 no. 3 2017 11713345 2017 periodical issue

    'In order to function, your imagination employs an intensity of feeling. It can function only through such intensity because it needs to create, only from your memories, emotions, knowledge and perceptions, representations of activities and things that are not immediately present and not therefore accessible to your senses.

    'Your imagination’s intensity of feeling is empowered by your emotions. Emotions are widely shared human assessments, psychological and physiological reactions to events, people, experiences, the world, thoughts. Your feelings are how such emotions are individually described by you. Two people can have similar psychological and physiological reactions and one of them might describe the feeling as ‘love’ and the other person describe the feeling as ‘affection’. Because the imagination is key to creative writing, the place of feeling is heightened and your individual interpretation of emotions (yours and those of others) is therefore essential to creative writing.' (Editorial)

    2017
    pg. 455-464
Last amended 6 Sep 2017 16:20:50
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