Writing Ugly… is good?

I did an introductory course to creative writing a while ago and my lecturer used to say “write ugly, don’t be afraid to write ugly”. I thought it was to not be afraid to write about ugly things. Don’t shy away from topics that are gruesome or potentially controversial. Don’t be afraid to write about ugly things, rubbish things. He never really explained it, and I never really thought about it all too much.

While I think that’s my original viewpoint was necessary at the time, I found out there was another meaning to his advice.

Don’t be afraid to write badly.

I read this article (link) and it turns out, writing ugly can also mean writing a rubbish first draft to tweak and improve later on.

If you’re like me and get caught up in finding the perfect word or phrase, you’ll never get anything written. Most of the time even when I try to take the time to perfect it, it’ll change in editing. I’ll spend hours labouring over how to describe a stew, and end up with “the stew was rich” once edited. Purple prose is something I don’t quite understand yet, but I do know that a paragraph on stew is not necessarily good writing, even if I spend a long time on it.

I think the point is to not be afraid of failure to write. Don’t be obsessed with perfection the first go around. Forget your ego, your pride and just write the story you want to tell. Put in those grammatical errors and spelling mistakes – then fix them later.

Forget yourself. Forget what others might say. Write.

I’ve been trying to write ugly for a while now. It’s hard work. I am getting more written, but the word count is not reflective of what I’ll edit into. For my novel, I’m trying not to edit as I go along, as the plot and characters are evolving and changing. Plot continuity errors will need to be fixed later on. Being unafraid to write ugly means that I’m challenging myself to write an entire piece that is a mess. I’m less afraid of messing up, because it’s a mess anyway. I don’t need to spend 4 hours reading about when you type “four” or “4”, because I’ll just write what’s natural in that moment.

It’s uncensored. It’s unfiltered. It’s amazingly freeing. It’s incredibly difficult.