How to Become a Writer

When Francie discusses the writing process with others or shows them her work, she describes their faces as “blank,” because they do not understand her or her art. “Blank” also immediately conjures an empty page, although deliberately Moore defers making this association overt. The similes used vary through the piece to create a rolling pattern. They indicate how Francie is feeling in these moments and describe her perspective of the people around her, mostly that they are faceless or irrelevant. In the opening passage, her mother’s face is “blank as a donut” (1) and her classmates’ faces become one, “giant and blank as a vandalized clock” (6). Her mother, distracted by domestic concerns, becomes something related to food. Francie feels exposed by her classmates, even “vandalized,” and they, too, are disturbed at the idea that someone might not want to be in a creative writing class; the “clock” is a symbol of wasted time. Later, after she describes a literary joke to her roommate, she sees her face as “blank as a Kleenex” (17), an image expressive of waste.

Finally, in the second to last paragraph, now that Francie’s life is wholly consumed by writing, her date asks about the frustrations of writing, his face as “blank as a sheet of paper” (41).