Julie R. Neidlinger: Lone Prairie Art and Writing

Re-run: Write as badly as possible.

written by Julie R. Neidlinger 0 comments link this post

::This post originally appeared on my old Lone Prairie blog in June, 2005.::

At the last writers' group meeting, I threw together an essay on how writing badly has essentially ripped me from writers' block. I didn't consider it very good, which was fitting considering the subject matter. However, Our Beloved Leader asked if she could keep a copy for something she's working on.

"Sure!" I said. "All my best ideas have been borrowed from other people!"

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How to write badly and still succeed as a writer
by Julie R. Neidlinger

Conquering the great, blank page is the instigator for many household “puttering around” sessions. The blank page calls out, and I uncomfortably ignore it by dusting my bell collection and rearranging the pillows on my bed. Or I buy yet another blank journal, with plate-finish paper and a slip-open spine that begs to be used, thinking that surely, with this fine book, I will write my own East of Eden.

I have about 35 unused, but very fine, blank journals.

Who would have thought the key to freedom, the solution to my paralyzing writers' block, was to simply set out to purposefully write the worst prose possible? Knowing that I don't have to astonish the room, and maybe the writers' group, freed up my pen and I began to scrawl some of the silliest, most horrible twisted-grammar prose ever conceived in the free world.

It was wonderful.

I found myself giggling to myself at my own cleverness, yet badness.

I find I can't wait to get back to my story, a story I have no idea where it's going, and no clue how I'll tie up all the odd loose ends and details that I throw in at a rate of about two per page. A story whose plot is questionable, with a title doesn't make sense yet. There's no direction for my weakly fleshed-out character to travel. Yet my pen flies across the paper as it rushes to keep up with the ideas pouring out of my head. I'm confident that at some point, these things will come together. Or, I'll just start another journal. That's what pens are for. And re-writes.

Who would have thought the best way to conquer fear or writers' block was to sit down and just write? You'd think it would be obvious, but it wasn't. I assumed everything I wrote had to be deep stories drenched in tragedy and poignancy so that someday, a New York Times book reviewer wouldn't have to scramble to find positive adjectives to describe these noble ventures.

The pressure to write The Great American Novel wasn't helping me actually write anything at all.

Excuses and listings of why I couldn't or wasn't writing didn't get me to write. As complex and real as my excuses were - "I'm too busy" or "I don't know how to start" - somehow the writing never happened. Neither did reliving my glory days of yesteryear when I had managed to write something, serving it up warmed-over with a few grammatical changes.

The path to success was to pick up a pen and split an infinitive as I made my merry way down the road of awful writing.

Don't be afraid to write badly. Bad writing has filled an awful lot of journals throughout history, and that's nothing to laugh at. Be successful: be your bad self.