Writing Talk: Interviews with Writers about the Creative Process

Writing Talk includes interviews with nineteen well-known contemporary writers, exploring the ways in which they research and find their original ideas. Working across genres such as fiction, scriptwriting, radio, life writing, biography and more, the writers offer insight into how they interpret, hone and develop these ideas. The conversations examine the roles of technique, craft, language, reading, memory, serendipity, habit and persistence. They offer technical detail about the creative process and give unique insights into the borderlands between genres as well as offering rich, personal insights and universal resonances. A wide-ranging introduction surveys the reasons why we are intrigued by the mysteries of individual writing practice and how these illuminate critical attitudes to literature and performance. Offering a rare glimpse into the creative process of some of this generation’s most eminent voices, Writing Talk is a must read for anyone interested in how stories are found and made.

Interviewees:

Alan Ayckbourn, Iain Banks, Helen Blakeman, Louis de Bernières, Sarah Butler, Andrew Cowan, Jenny Diski, Patricia Duncker, David Edgar, Tanika Gupta, Richard Holmes, Hanif Kureishi, Bryony Lavery, Toby Litt, Kareem Mortimer, Michèle Roberts, Jane Rogers, Willy Russell and Sally Wainwright.

Derek Neale is head of Creative Writing at The Open University and Higher Education Chair of the National Association of Writers in Education. A novelist, short story and script writer, he is editor of Writing in Practice: The Journal of Creative Writing Research. His publications include A Creative Writing Handbook: Developing Dramatic Technique, Individual Style and Voice (2009), which he edited and co-wrote, and The Book of Guardians (2012). He has also co-authored three volumes for Routledge: Creative Writing: A Workbook with Readings (2006 ed. Linda Anderson), Writing Fiction (2009) and Life Writing (2009).