Charlotte Wood – The Writer’s Room: Conversations About Writing (Literature Review)

Have you ever read a book so good that you wish you could sit down with the author and chat about it, like an old friend you invite over for morning tea once a month?

Well, in The Writer’s Room: Conversations About Writing, Stella Prize winning author Charlotte Wood has done just that. A collection of some of her most notable interviews from the online journal of the same name, The Writer’s Room provides insights into the creative processes behind some of Australia and New Zealand’s best loved literary works.

While most author interviews these days take place in the lead up to the release of a new best-seller, Wood’s collection is not about creating hype with an eye to the bottom line.

Taking inspiration from the Paris Review style of old, Wood’s techniques as an interviewer rely more on the creation of a relationship with a fellow author, be it long-time friends Tegan Bennett Daylight (What Falls Away and Six Bedrooms), Christos Tsiolkas (Barracuda and The Slap), or someone she met briefly and approached specifically for the pleasure of interviewing them, such as Craig Sherborne (Hoi Polloi) or Kim Scott (That Deadman Dance and Taboo).

Most often, these interviews are conducted on the subject’s home turf, a place of their own choosing where they are surrounded by creature comforts and family, rather than the sterile office of a publisher, or the less personal phone/email interview.

Each interview begins with a little prologue of sorts, which Wood uses to “set the scene”, introducing the author, their works, and how she came to know them. These interviews are slower, deliberately so, according to Wood, who crafted them as something from which the reader can gain real insight into the creative process behind the best-sellers.

“The point of The Writer’s Room Interviews was not celebrity or accolades or life stories, but a deeper sharing of the creative process among writers in different genres,” she writes in the book’s introduction. “For me, it was an extraordinary privilege to sit with each of these writers in a private masterclass of my own.”

Sure, Wood asks the questions we all want to know the answer to, the pre-requisite “How did you first get into writing?” and “Do you have a specific routine?”, but she’s also not afraid to follow her subject’s lead, to be inspired by their answers and follow up with insightful questions designed to delve further into their train of thought.

It is this, in my opinion, that makes this collection so unique and approachable for both aspiring writers and readers. It’s the fulfillment of that “fly-on-the-wall” scenario that we have all at one time or another dreamed of. Though most Q & A’s can, at times, become a little dreary and remote, it’s Wood’s instinctual sense of what she both as a fan and a colleague wants to ask that truly drives the book and makes it so engaging.

The Writer’s Room has been labelled an “indispensable resource” an a “masterpiece of non-fiction”, by critics and colleagues alike. And honestly, it’s hard to find a better description. If you’ve ever been interested in literature, and the craft of writing, this is one not to miss.