Why I Decided to Write a Bad Novel
The trick to writing every day isn’t motivation — it’s setting better goals
In October, I decided I was going to write a novel.
I’ve always been one to put everything I have into an idea when it’s exciting and new, only to burn out once I catch wind of the next big plan. And writing a novel was no different.
At first, I was obsessed. I’d sit down and lose track of time, letting inspiration strike as words poured out of me. I was enjoying the process, and for a little while, that was enough. I allowed my feelings to dictate my motivation, writing a sentence or a page, then going for a walk by the beach or buy overpriced coffee at my favorite cafe or calling my mom. I was writing well and often without a schedule. So I didn’t see any reason to implement one.
But as time passed, the priorities of my day-to-day life began to overshadow my inspiration. I was busy, and writing was hard. I had dinner to cook and busses to catch and work to do.
I wanted those pages to be a novel. But I knew they were not.
I had twenty pages in a Google doc that no one had ever seen, and I hadn’t written anything for weeks.
I wasn’t writing anything good. But the bigger problem? I also wasn’t writing anything bad. Or mediocre. Or anything at all.
I was avoiding my laptop one day after chatting with a coworker about writer’s block.
“It’s more than likely that no one’s ever going to read your novel,” he had said. This hurt. But it was also freeing. If no one was ever ever going to read my novel, why did I care if it was good? I was doing this because I liked it. So shouldn’t I just focus on writing something, even if it was really, really bad? Setting out to write a good novel had left me stagnant, uninspired, and on the verge of giving up. So I changed my goal.
I decided to write a bad novel. I decided to sit down every single day with the intention of creating bad writing.
As soon as I started writing poorly on purpose, it became easier to just write. It didn’t matter if I felt inspired, or excited, or energized, because I didn’t need to feel inspired, excited, or energized to write badly. I didn’t need to feel anything to write badly. All I needed to do was sit down and type. I decided I’d track my bad writing in a spreadsheet to hold me accountable, and I’d focus on writing 100 bad words a day. And nothing else.
And suddenly, I was writing (almost) daily again. Often, I wrote 100 really poorly written words — words that I knew I’d probably end up editing or deleting entirely. But even when my writing was bad, I’d input my word count into my spreadsheet, and watch the line climb. Then do it again the next day.
But as I grew more accustomed to writing regularly and frequently, I found myself occasionally writing stuff I was proud of, too — writing stuff that felt natural, and high-quality, and floated out of me without much effort. Writing stuff that wouldn’t have made it to paper if I hadn’t just sat down with the intention of writing something bad.
I don’t know if my book is good or not.
But it’s eighty pages closer to being a book than it was a few months ago. Maybe I’ll finish it, and it will be bad, but it will get me to my my second or third book, which might be half decent. Or maybe I’ll write countless novels and no one will like any of them.
But at least by writing badly every single day, I’m giving myself the opportunity to write. And that’s a lot more than I had before.
