intenionally bad versus unintentionally bad

Attempting to write intentionally bad stuff is an interesting exercise. Perhaps it might result in unintentionally good writing (unlikely though).

Here's one of my efforts from a few years back. At the time, I was teaching the Creative Writing course at UvT (Mark Vitullo, who is in charge of the course, had too many students to fit in his class so he opened a 2nd group; I gladly took the chance to teach it).

My idea was to try to break a good number of writing rules in one short story.....


Never Give Up

A story by Kevin Murdoch

Harry P. Peabody, commander of his own fishing boat, felt very disappointed. He had caught no fish now for a long time. As fishing was his livelihood, his financial security was dependent to a large extent on the number of fish he caught. Accordingly, scanty or empty nets represented a severe financial blow. As we have already said, he had caught nothing now for a very long time and so he was really down. He expressed this feeling to his wife, who comforted him as best she could. She had her own problems though. She wanted to move to the big city and become a teacher because she was fed up with her hard life as a fisherman’s wife. She had said as much to Harry on many occasions but he, whilst he understood how she felt, felt that they should not give up on their fishing.

Harry had a boat. This boat was a very unusual boat. One morning he took her out and cast out his nets. It was a nice day, one of the days that make you feel really good. You know the feeling- you wake up to the sun’s happy face beaming her rays down on you and you feel like everything is gonna be ok. You can pack up your troubles in an old kit bag. Harry felt like this. He felt that his troubles would soon be in the past. While he waited for the fish to bite, he looked at the sea.

But once again, the fisherman returned home empty-handed and disappointed. “Oh not again. I can’t believe it” he said to his wife in an unbelieving kind of way. “Oy rackun ‘tis a rum stayt ov affurs we iz expeerienzin’ moiy dear Harry bat doan you give up” she said in her strong local dialect that not many people besides Harry could understand. She told him that he must just wait till the good times came again.

Sure enough, the next week, the nets were full of fish and they were able to buy a new and bigger boat. From that day onwards, the business prospered. Harry P. Peabody never looked back and his wife’s timely advice not to give up can, in retrospect, be seen as a turning point in the affairs of this down to earth, honest and hard-working couple.