INTERVIEWER
What about grad school? Is it possible that being a paralegal is better training for a writer than an M.F.A. program?
MOORE
Anything, I’m sure, is possible. I’ve actually known many writers who were paralegals. Probably it is simply because working as a paralegal pays Manhattan rents just a tiny bit better than entry-level publishing jobs—although maybe it doesn’t pay them at all anymore. This was in the 1970s. I’m not sure I believe in “training” to be a writer that is external like that anyway. I don’t think writers “train” the way athletes do. It is not performative and helped by little exercises; one’s mind is probably not beneficially roughened or honed by deadening work. Writing is more a habit, but a soulful one like smoking, which compulsively connects the head to the hand; from there one tries to make art of it. How does one pick up such a habit? By hanging around the kids with the cigarettes, of course. And a love of books and music—every writer must have that.
Lorrie Moore, The Art of Fiction No. 167, The Paris Review, Interviewed by Elizabeth Gaffney
2087
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