Shared Suffering

MML #26: "How to Become a Writer Or, Have You Earned This Cliche?" by Lorrie Moore

This is from a collection of Lorrie Moore's short stories entitled "Self Help" and rather than bog you down with precisely why I thought this short story was awesome, I'm just going to type up every single quote that made me happy. (Annie already heard most of these because I kept reading them aloud to her while we were at the White Hart Café yesterday.)

"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. It is best if you fail at an early age - say 14. Early, critical disillusionment is necessary so that at 15 you can write long haiku sequences about thwarted desire."

"Apply to college as a child psychology major."

"Decide that you like college life. In your dorm you meet many nice people. some are smarter than you. And some, you notice, are dumber than you. You will continue, unfortunately, to view the world in exactly these terms for the rest of your life."

"Decide that perhaps you should stick to comedies. Start dating someone who is funny, someone who has what in high school you called a 'really great sense of humor' and what your creative writing class calls 'self-contempt giving rise to comic form.'"

"You spend too much time slouched and demoralized. Your boyfriend suggests bicycling. Your roommate suggests a new boyfriend. You are said to be self-mutilating and losing weight, but you continue writing. The only happiness you have is writing something new, in the middle of the night, armpits damp, heart pounding, something no one has yet seen. You have only those brief, fragile, untested moments of exhilaration when you know: you are a genius."

"Insist that you are not very interested in any one subject at all, that you are interested in he music of language, that you are interested in - in - syllables, because they are the atoms of poetry, the cells of the mind, the breath of the soul. Begin to feel woozy. Stare into your plastic wine cup."

"Begin to wonder what you do write about. Or if you have anything to say. Or if there even is such a thing as a thing to say. Limit these thoughts to no more than 10 minutes a day, like sit-ups, they can make you thin."

"You will read somewhere that all writing has to do with one's genitals. Don't dwell on this. It will make you nervous."