The only writer constantly discouraged from writing novels

Nathalie Chicha shares notes from Lorrie Moore’s Q&A with her writing workshop:

-She almost always has a story’s ending in mind before starting it. Then, one-third into the story, the ending becomes clearer, and she skips ahead and writes it.

-A student asks how she goes about assigning characters their jobs, “something poets don’t need to think about.” It’s a “real weakness for me,” Moore says. She keeps on accidentally letting characters work at historical societies.

-Moore describes the process of writing a short story: First comes “some idea”; then, “things fall in from the world” — things that have “correspondence” to that first idea; and eventually, there’s a moment when the story “closes” shut and becomes a “hot house