The Unexpected Joy of Writing Badly

How embracing terrible first drafts set my creativity free—and why yours might be too polished.

Elias Frost

Mar 10, 2025

8 min read

The Draft That Changed Everything

I used to spend weeks crafting the "perfect" opening line before allowing myself to write paragraph two. Then one desperate midnight before a deadline, I vomited out 800 words of incoherent garbage titled "Why Do All My Characters Have Daddy Issues (And Other Questions I'm Too Tired to Answer)".

To my horror, my writing group loved it. Not despite its messiness—because of it.

WordPress wants you to wrestle with plugins. Medium demands you surrender your branding. Social media turns your prose into disposable confetti. And the idea of learning to code? You’d rather edit a 10,000-word draft in a single sitting.
Enter Scribbble.

Why "Bad" Writing Works

Scribbble isn’t just another blogging tool. It’s a no-code sanctuary built specifically for writers who want:

Ownership: Your domain, your design, your rules.
Simplicity: Publish in minutes, not days.
Elegance: Templates that make your words look as good as they deserve.

Here’s how it works:

1. Imperfection invites connection
That draft contained an unedited aside: "This metaphor isn't working but I'm too tired to fix it—imagine something about teacups here." Three readers emailed me their teacup metaphors. Suddenly, we were collaborating.

2. Flaws become features
My protagonist's inconsistent accent (a mistake I meant to fix) became a plot point about identity shifting.

3. Speed beats brilliance
Finishing five awful drafts taught me more than perfecting one.

How to Write Worse On Purpose

The more permission I gave myself to write badly, the more alive my writing became. That cringeworthy midnight draft? It's now my most-anthologized story.

P.S. This essay took three drafts. The first contained the phrase "good writing is like refrigerated sushi". Some metaphors deserve to stay bad.

Try these exercises:

The "No Backspace" Challenge: Write for 20 minutes without deleting a single word.
Annotations Welcome: Share drafts with notes like "This simile died en route to greatness."
First-Draft Fridays: Post raw snippets under #ScribbbleMessy.

Your Turn

Open a new document right now

Write the worst possible opening line you can imagine
Hit publish somewhere (yes, really)

Tag your #ScribbbleMessy experiment—I'll feature my favorites next week.

Want more? I keep a "Hall of Shame" folder full of my worst sentences. It's my most visited creative resource.

[Download my terrible first drafts] → (Coming soon)

Why This Works

Turns weakness into strength by reframing "bad" as authentic

Interactive elements invite reader participation
Shows rather than tells through concrete examples

Would you like a reader spotlight section featuring submitted messy drafts? Or a list of famous authors' terrible first lines?