'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
