Every so often, I come across a book that I declare to be the worst thing I’ve ever read. It might not make sense, it might be written in the most garbled English I’ve ever seen, or it might be absolute grammatical perfection and just have the most laughable plot/story. It might even be totally fine, but the narrative tone is so insidiously arrogant that I am loathe to even touch the cover. Not every bad book is the worst thing I’ve ever read; this is a special title bestowed upon only the worst of the worst.
The current title holder?
Steve Alten’s The Loch.
This book is bad for a lot of reasons. First: there’s only one named female character in the whole book. Second: for a book set in Scotland, this author has never googled the country, let alone set foot in it. Third: the history is appallingly, laughably bad. And fourth (but definitely not last): this man somehow wrote a story where the Loch Ness Monster is uncool.
I’m not kidding. If the Nessie in this story was a person, she’d be a grass.
My inexhaustible hatred for this book aside, I still have it. I’m re-reading it right now. I’ll probably find four new awful things about it. And yet, I’ll keep it.
Why?
Because it helps me with my own writing.
Sometimes, when the writer’s block hits bad, or I’m staring at a blank page with a multicoloured pen about the burst in my grip, I vomit whatever words are currently in my head onto the page. These words are awful. Sometimes I’ll get a whole first draft out of them. Sometimes, I’ll be so sleep-deprived that I’ll write what I think is the solution to global warming, and then I’ll read it back it in the morning and want to set myself on fire.
What do I do when I cringe so badly at my own work that I want to crawl into a hole and die?
I take a deep breath and tell myself, at least it’s not as bad as The Loch.
I’m not published. I might never be. But I’ll keep writing, because I love it. And nothing I write will ever be as bad as that book.
The best advice I can give to new writers (should they want my advice) is simple.
Find your The Loch.
Writing Werewolf 