Inspired by bad writing

Eudora Welty can show us what perfection looks like, but twenty thousand pages of bad fiction read over the course of a life can teach you what not to do.

Ann Patchett, These Precious Days

One of Ann Patchett's stepfathers was a successful surgeon, but he wanted to be a writer like his stepdaughter. He produced manuscript after manuscript, and he asked Patchett to read them all. They may have been uniformly bad, as she describes in an essay called "My Three Fathers" in her book These Precious Days, but she does not consider the many hours spent reading those manuscripts wasted time or wasted effort.

"Dialogue, character development, pacing, setting, plot — I had seen every element of the novel run through a meat grinder," she writes. "By burying me in piles of manuscripts throughout my life, Mike made me careful. What a time saver that turned out to be !"

Of course, for bad writing to be instructive, one must first recognize it as bad writing. One does that by also reading good writing, preferably great writing. How are they different? Why does one story zing while another plods? Why does one plot encourage you to keep reading while another makes you want to close the book and do something else?

Bad writing, Patchett suggests, should be read with as much attention as a Eudora Welty short story. Where did the writer go wrong? Why doesn't this work? How can I avoid doing the same thing?

In another essay later in the book, "To the Doghouse," Patchett tells of being inspired by the comic strip character Snoopy as a girl dreaming about becoming a writer. Snoopy may be a dog, but that doesn't deter him from wanting to be a writer, sort of like Mike. And because he begins every story with the words "It was a dark and stormy night," you know, also like Mike, he isn't a very good writer. Yet Patchett tells us in amusing detail all the things she learned about writing from Snoopy.

Snoopy waits by the mailbox eagerly, but then receives nothing but rejection slips. An important lesson for aspiring writers. But he doesn't let rejection slips or bad reviews stop him.

Snoopy has an active, imaginative inner life — turning his doghouse into a Sopwith Camel, for example — and what writer doesn't need an inner life something like that?

Patchett remembers that the first time she ever learned about War and Peace was when Snoopy performs a hand puppet version. Even bad writers can be inspired by great writers, but Ann Patchet shows us how bad writers can inspire us as well.