Writing Bad…

I want to tell you about ‘the short bad book.’ It’s the title of a chapter in Still Writing by Dani Shapiro, of which if you read my last newsletter and/or blog you will know I’m a huge fan .

I’m an even bigger fan now, since I tweeted my blog and had a lovely and totally unexpected reply from Dani Shapiro herself. She lives by her words which are generous and egalitarian.

But, back to this ‘short bad book.’ The idea is that anyone can write a short bad book, right? So telling ourselves this or some version of this, is a way of releasing ourselves from the pressure that comes with wanting to succeed and to find publication. Well, for starters, I definitely identify with ‘the short.’ Deciding to write a novella or allowing a book to be the length that suits is very appealing to me. It takes pressure off, even if in the end you write long, or as I did, longer than intended.

Of course I hope I won’t ever write, ‘bad,’ but I don’t think we’re meant to take this too seriously. Say it with panache, a smile or a hint of irony and it’s not difficult to see how it helps to let us off the hook. It’s a bit of a shop stopper too and I like that.

Shapiro says ‘The more we have at stake, the harder it is to make the leap into writing. The more we think about who’s going to read it, what they’re going to think, how many copies will be printed, whether this magazine or that magazine will accept it for publication, the further away we are from accomplishing anything on the page.’

We can’t help it of course, thinking about getting published, hoping for recognition, competition success, an audience for our work but there’s no doubt in my mind that this gets in the way. I’ll admit I’ve been there – only recently I saw a big competition I thought I’d like to enter. I don’t enter competitions much now but this was different. This was special. I wondered what kind of a story I could write, what kind of a story would win. It would have to be exceptionally good I felt, original, and very different, it would have to be…what? What could it be? Ideas failed me. Nothing seemed good enough. I was paralysed by the brief and then forced to remind myself (you’d think I might have learned by now!) that the best stories and the best writing come of their own accord. That all we can do is sit down and begin, endure, work hard, write every day that we can, and trust what comes. Writing to formulas or for prizes simply doesn’t work.

I think we all need our own version of the ‘short bad book’. I think I might write a ‘short, lousy book,’ or maybe a ‘short, insignificant, book,’ or perhaps just a ‘bad short story.’

I remember the lovely, late, Julia Darling running a workshop I attended where she instructed us to write the worst beginning for our story that we could think.

We did this and then read around. It was startling to see how many great beginnings there were. If you have a story in mind or have even started one, why not try this and see? It might change things, it might free you up, something unexpected might happen, because there’s something about writing bad that is is fun and liberating.