It’s funny. It’s wry. It makes you think of all the things that you might like to have been told. So, a little bit like To My Trans Sisters it sits here. “You read the whole thing out in class. No one likes it. They say your sense of plot is outrageous and incompetent. After class someone asks you if you are crazy.” It feels specifically American (someone should write a UK version, or every country should write their own version). “Write a story about a confused music student and title it ‘Schubert Was the One with the Glasses Right.’” I think ‘How to Become a Writer’ could get developed (go a little further) and it does leave you a bit hanging at the end. But for its audacity and style I’d put it in the mix, especially when there are so many myths and debates about writing courses, and writing as a career / profession. To quote Moore: ” A short story is a love affair, a novel is a marriage. A short story is a photograph, a novel is a film.”
First collected in Self-Help, Knopf, 1985. Also in The Collected Stories of Lorrie Moore, 2009, Faber, and as a standalone publication by Faber Modern Classics, 2015
A Personal Anthology 