I got a letter from a young man I had never heard of before and he announced blandly that he was writing stories which he thought were very much like mine and he wondered if I would read them. He was also worried about sending them to editors because they were so very much like mine he was afraid the editors would think he had borrowed them. He was a Certified Public Accountant but wondered if he should drop that occupation and become a writer. Would I please advise him. I advised him to stick to Certified Public Accounting.
A letter from Flannery O’Connor to Cecil Dawkins, 22 December 1957. From The Habit of Being. Vintage Books Edition, 1980.