Published in 1985
10 pages
Lorrie Moore is the Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Professor of English at Vanderbilt University. She is the recipient of a Lannan Foundation fellowship, as well as the PEN/Malamud Award and the Rea Award for her achievement in the short story. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She lives in Nashville, Tennessee.
What is this book about?
How To Become a Writer is one of the stories in Lorrie Moore’s debut collection Self-Help. It is a short, humorous and sarcastic advice to all who google how to become a writer. She captures the writing process well in this witty and ironic short story. She titles her piece “How to Become a Writer” and yet provides no actual indication of how to write at all. Her discursive, witty movement from event to event portrays the writing life well, showing how there remains no one path to becoming a writer: you write, and you are a writer, and that is that. Just throw in some existential crises, judgment from family and friends, and endless self-evaluations of your self-worth (or lack thereof).
