How To Become A Writer - Response :)

1. I think the whole story being told in the second person view is kind of annoying. It doesn't really work out well because it gets kind of confusing. She talks about how she was in her English class in high school with HER teacher named Mr. Killian but she is the one who had him as a teacher, not us, so the whole concept of the story being told in the second person point of view is kind of annoying.


2. My two favorite parts would have to be …

I. As a child psychology major, you have some electives. You've always liked birds. Sign up for something called "The Ornithological Field Trip." It meets Tuesdays and Thursdays at two. When you arrive at Room 134 on the first day of class, everyone is sitting around a seminar table talking about metaphors. You've heard of these. After a short, excruciating while, raise your hand and say diffidently, "Excuse me, isn't this Bird-watching One-oh-one?" The class stops and turns to look at you. They seem to all have one face--giant and blank as a vandalized clock. Someone with a beard booms out, "No, this is Creative Writing." Say: "Oh--right," as if perhaps you knew all along. Look down at your schedule. Wonder how the hell you ended up here. The computer, apparently, has made an error. You start to get up to leave and then don't.

I like this part because if I was in her position I would have done the same thing as well. I would have walked in the wrong room, asked what class this is and would’ve have been like “Oh, right” as well. I also would have just stayed there too, just so I wouldn’t look like an idiot in front of everyone.

II. Write a short story about an elderly man and woman who accidentally shoot each other in the head, the result of an inexplicable malfunction of a shotgun which appears mysteriously in their living room one night. Give it to Mr. Killian as your final project. When you get it back, he has written on it: "Some of your images are quite nice, but you have no sense of plot." When you are home, in the privacy of your own room, faintly scrawl in pencil beneath his black-inked comments: "Plots are for dead people, pore-face."


I like this part as well because I can relate to this too. I’m not the best writer, so whenever I hand in something for English, my teachers have always told me to keep adding more and more when I don’t know what more to write.


3. I think Lorrie Moore is trying to say that you can write about anything you want as long as it is creative. I know this because in her story, she is writing about random stuff, but it capture’s the reader’s attention which shows the story is interesting.