Title: What makes bad writing bad? | Books | The Guardian
Headings: What makes bad writing bad?
Books
What makes bad writing bad?
The biggest mistake most writers make is thinking they have nothing left to learn
Toby Litt
When Updike began writing Rabbit, Run it was either going to be a great technical feat or a humiliating misjudgment
Any attempt to write fiction in order to make the world a better, fairer place is almost certain to fail

Content: On numerous occasions. If you ask around, I’m sure you’ll be able to find a really bad novel easily enough. I mean a novel by someone who has spent isolated years writing a book they are convinced is a great work of literature. And when you’re reading it you’ll know it’s bad, and you’ll know what bad truly is. The friend of a friend’s novel may have some redeeming features – the odd nicely shaped sentence, the stray brilliant image. But it is still an agony to force oneself to keep going. It is still telling you nothing you didn’t already know. Bad writers continue to write badly because they have many reasons – in their view very good reasons – for writing in the way they do. Writers are bad because they cleave to the causes of writing badly. Bad writing is almost always a love poem addressed by the self to the self.