Permission to Suck? Granted.

A Writing Practice for Perfectionists

This post is part of my series How to Start a Writing Practice: A 7-Week Experiment. Read the full series here.

Last week we acknowledged that you don’t have to know how to read or write to tell a good story. (You can catch up here) This week we’re going one step further. We’re giving so called “good” writing the day off too.

When I’m stuck trying to write a bio, create a class, or even just freewrite (like we’ve been doing in this series), I start writing something completely nonsensical on purpose.

Like imagining that we all had feathers instead of hair on our heads and wondering what going to the hairdresser would look like. Would the featherdresser have little beaks on her hands so she could preen her customers?

I love writers who give themselves permission to be non-linear, scatological, or just bizarre.

James Joyce.

Virginia Woolf.

Flann O’Brien.

These folks wrote some of the strangest, most magical sentences ever put on paper.

Like when James Joyce wanted to describe the fall of Adam and Eve from paradise in Finnegan’s Wake, he wrote:

“Bababadalgharaghtakamminarronnkonnbronntonnerronntuonnthunntrovarrhounawnskawntoohoohoordenenthurnuk.”

That’s it. That’s the sentence.

I say, let’s give it a try.

What we want is that sentence with the wet prune eye and the missing teeth wheeling around sprouting obscenities like a drunk uncle at a Christmas party. Yeah. Keep that one.

All your mangled sentences full of life, sloppily spilling on the page? Leave them too! Let them sprawl there in their filthy, delectable, rule-breaking mess. Let them decolonize the page with their bad form. Their posture like spaghetti in a hurricane as the powdered wig of structure burns.

Smear your words like a five-year-old with hands full of paint and head straight for the white couch of every writing rule you were ever taught. Yeah, you know what to do. Gleefully spread your colored delight all over it.

Think of yourself as an endangered bird kept on display for civilized people to study. And today is the day you busted out, spread your iridescent wings, and found the endless sky where there are no grammar stops and no shaking-finger criticism bombs.

Stick words together that absolutely do not belong together. Like an old country arranged marriage.

pickle pomegranate

needle and stupid

delectable vomit trap

bulbous Jell-O fink

total armpit revelation

cat sock bite

ravenous pincher

revolting belly pup

Then let them divorce.

bulbous bite pickle needle

revolution cat pincher

Just see what happens when you break, bend, or care a little less about the rules.

Your practice

If you’re up to it, write something absurd, and don’t be afraid to write it badly. No skills, or rules — just freedom.

Write like a five-year-old.

Use your non-dominant hand.

Write the same word over and over again.

Here are a few places you could start:

Write a nonsensical word for every letter of the alphabet

–Aviltook

–Bumdincher

–Caveltorcher

Or riff on one of these prompts:

You wake up one morning and discover your car has turned into lime Jell-O. How do you drive it to work?

You discover that your nose is detachable. How does this affect kissing?

You take out the garbage one evening and find a raccoon wearing a top hat standing on the can. What does it say?

Pick one. Have some fun. And keep writing.

This essay originally appeared on my Substack newsletter Sensitive Matters.

Read the next post in this series