I am starting an occasional segment on this blog called “Writing Bad,” which, as the title suggests, focuses on writing that is bad!

Here are some of the ways we will be celebrating bad writing:

— A segment where I post actual lines I have read in student essays (completely anonymized, of course) over the years (like the one in the title of this post), and people try to build flash fiction around them;

— A segment where people submit writing they did when they were much younger and critique it as as if writing a letter to their current selves;

— A segment where people submit a bad line or two they have written on purpose and everyone chimes in with suggestions for making it better — or worse;

— A segment where people rewrite their favorite paragraph from literature as badly as possible;

— Who knows what else.

 

Note: None of this is intended to be mean-spirited, and my intent is that none of these fun exercises turn into grousing or bemoaning sessions. The idea is light-hearted fun!