This is an interesting idea for a documentary (h/t the New Yorker’s Book Bench Blog), which is making the rounds … A guy found all of the poems he wrote as a teenager, when he was convinced that he would become the world’s greatest poet. Years later, he unearths them and realizes how bad the poems were. So he takes them around to real writers (Margaret Atwood, David Sedaris, Steve Almond, etc.) to not only confirm that they are bad, but get at the elusive mystery of Bad Writing.
I like the concept. Would love to see someone do this project with something more vulnerable than bad teen poems written years ago. Like maybe someone who takes his self-published novel around to writers or critics and asks them to give it to him straight.
Bad Writing – Official Trailer from Morris Hill Pictures on Vimeo.
brendan doherty says
May 24, 2010 at 11:46 amah, Salieri! How bitter the taste
of another’s seeming ease and endless victory.