Maybe your idea of a good time is to get together with friends and watch Tommy Wiseau's magnificently awful The Room. Or maybe you like to play a party game where everyone takes turns reading The Eye of Argon. You'll be happy to know that the celebration of unfortunate art and literature has a proud history. Even C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkein would get together with friends and read the works of Amanda McKittrick Ros to see who would start laughing first. Finding the best bad writing can be just as hard as finding an enduring classic.
William McGonagall holds his own with the worst of 19th century British poets. He doesn't quite know what meter is, and he goes a very long way to make a rhyme. When he struggled to sell his poetry, friends got together to publish a series of collections, which grew to include such titles as Poetic Gems, More Poetic Gems, Still More Poetic Gems, Yet More Poetic Gems, Further Poetic Gems, Yet Further Poetic Gems and Last Poetic Gems. If you'd like to hear these gems for yourself, you can download a lively performance by actor Gregor Fisher through Hoopla.
But you don't have to be a bad poet to occasionally write a bad line. Drivel is an anthology of regrettable early efforts from Chuck Palahniuk, Amy Tan, Gillian Flynn and others. It's enough to make all budding writers feel better about themselves.
Now that you feel better, it's time to fix your writing once again. How to Not Write Bad starts from the ground up, showing you how to write a sentence and rebuild your whole style.
Once you've gotten your bearings again, you'll be able to use your knowledge to finely appreciate the worst that literature has to offer.
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