From one woman whose name begins with L to another. Lorrie Moore’s collection Self Help was the catalyst for me to start writing. The first story I ever wrote, I wrote in the second person because I found Moore’s use of it so clever. Which it is. Looking back now, I realise it was also about finding a way into writing that didn’t feel as confidently aggressive as the first person because I wasn’t confident or aggressive. It was like I could side-eye my topics that way before finding a way to sidle up to the first person. Perhaps for that reason, my pick from this collection is ‘How to Become a Writer’, with the great opening line: “First, try to be something, anything, else. A movie star/astronaut. A movie star/missionary. A movie star/kindergarten teacher. President of the World. Fail miserably.” Who hasn’t been there? Or put another way: How many movie star/astronauts do you know?
Published in Self-Help, Alfred A. Knopf, 1985, and collected in The Collected Stories, Faber, 2008
A Personal Anthology 