Bad writing can serve as a lesson of one kind or another, but can it ever be recycled into something approximating art? That appears to be what Vernon Lott tried to do with "Bad Writing," a documentary inspired by the discovery of a cache of his old poems. Like Almond, he soon understood that you don't necessarily need more than one person to have a disagreement about what constitutes bad writing. The novel, poem or essay you write today, in full confidence of its genius, may be regarded by some later version of yourself as soul-witheringly dreadful. But was Lott able to spin the straw of poems like "Sketches of Despair" into the gold of a nifty short film featuring interviews with the likes of George Saunders and Margaret Atwood? Hard to say, as "Bad Writing" has yet to find distribution.
via salon.com