I've read a very great deal about writers at work (and I've written a bit myself). It reminded me of Tolstoi's line about happy families being all alike, while unhappy families are each unhappy in their own ways. It also remind of interviews with athletes after a contest. Winners very, very seldom have something interesting to say. I want to hear from the losers (though even there athletes are rarely articulate.)
Sprinters are the quintessential bad interview. "I just gave it a hundred ten percent!" What CAN the poor sprinter say? All the training in the world is not going to give you white-fiber fast-twitch muscle tissue. It may help build up the leg-strength and therefore the stride-length, but rate of speed comes from length of stride times frequency of turnover, and if you're not born with fast-twitch fiber, you'll never be a great sprinter. Long distance runners are much more comparable to artists, in that they can be interesting when they tell you when and how they went wrong. Writers who describe their stumbles, their outright errors, can be interesting -- and even informative. I once assembled a book, AFTERWORDS, NOVELISTS ON THEIR NOVELS, that was at its best when it conveyed the struggle. The PRODUCT of "perfect ease" may be gorgeous to behold, but the picture of the PROCESS, an account of one flawless step after another, is dull and frustrating to read. Variorums can be engaging as we see early versions of works that turn out to be great. And a writer who can cite a flaw of his, and accurately explain something about what led him wrong, can be enlightening. In an early play of mine, I diligently bent myself to planting the justifying seeds of certain later events. When a good director said to me, "I was one step ahead of you too much," he didn't have to say another word: I knew immediately what I'd done wrong. And I learned something I could carry with me into later work.
