How To Be a Writer?

Is it a cliche to assign Lorrie Moore's "How To Be a Writer" to an intro creative writing class?? Maybe, but I guess now I understand why so many teachers do it. Students had really insightful points and questions about this story. The piece raises a lot of questions about why writers write in the first place and about the usefulness of advice for beginning writers. It spurred questions about the validity of "suffering" for your work, whether writing was like a "disease that you caught and couldn't get rid of," about writing as a way to deal with personal demons, and about the difficulties and loneliness of trying to please people other than yourself through your writing. I didn't require my students to buy any textbooks and only assigned them one "theory" reading, which was my favorite essay on creative writing when I was an undergraduate: "The Lingerie Theory of Literature" By Julie Checkoway. Since they'd at least read this one theory essay, which does attempt to offer writing instruction to beginners, they felt like they were in the know about what a real "How To" essay would sound like. Of course the Moore piece also allows for some talk about the use of second person and the function of form in a story, and the use of voice, symbolism, subtext, etc. etc all delivered with great irony and great bits of bad writing (the main character tries a Melville remake called "Mopey Dick." the first line is "Call me Fishmeal."). I guess this post is just a vote for us to continue using this text...? But maybe everyone already is/has anyway. :)