Writing "Badly" to Write Well - or- How Rick and Morty Impacted My Teaching

[davidb...@gmail.com]

Sometimes, questions of when writing happens overlap with questions of what writing is, and what writing isn’t. Is there ever writing that’s so "bad" that we no longer consider it writing? If such a thing were produced would we then say that no writing has occurred? I find questions of writing quality and categorization especially arresting because of what they suggest about how writers think about writing. What I find most arresting, are the thought processes made available by "bad" writing, and the pedagogical uses that those processes might open up. 

        My fascination with writing "bad" comes from a close friend’s fascination with a TV writer. Dan Harmon rose to fame as a writer for the NBC show Community. I’ve never watched it. Harmon’s fame grew with his work on Rick and Morty: a cartoon meant for adults based on the characters Dr. Emmett Brown, or "Doc," and Marty McFly. Here’s a sample: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qUYvIAP3qQk  

I have watched Rick and Morty, and have grown at least somewhat interested in Harmon’s writing across the show's three seasons. In many ways, Dan Harmon’s thoughts on writing are at the root of this talk. 

Dan Harmon has a podcast, aptly named Harmontown. The podcast, which is often very silly, sometimes contains Harmon’s philosophy of writing. The following episode contains advice that Harmon has shared, "a thousand times before." Listen through the banter, from 44:00 until around 47:15: 

http://podbay.fm/show/542228532/e/1424285391?autostart=1   

As Harmon suggests, as writers, in order to eventually write well, we have to prove to ourselves that we’re "bad" writers, specifically by trying to write "bad," by thinking not of "the thing you’re eventually going to be able to do," but instead of "the thing you’re terrified you will do." I take Harmon’s advice as gesturing toward a kind of stock-taking pronoia: a kind of thought process by which one might prepare themself for kinds of success in various settings, a kind of thought that looks to the future, one that’s not stuck in the present with distraction, like paranoia. 

As you might have noticed, Harmon does not give specific details as to how to write bad, or really even what it might mean to write "bad." My presentation will explore what it might mean to write badly, some ways of writing purposefully bad in the classroom, and uses of writing badly, in hopes of expanding a definition of when writing occurs, so that attendees might leave with a kind of “Meeseeks” (see the YouTube clip above) or tool to add to their teaching toolbox. 

[Donora A. Rihn]

Ah I like this! (I've never seen Rick and Morty, but now I think I should.)