Criminals of the Writing World Unleashed

Every student unleashes the writer in their own writing that sucks from time to time. It's that writer that we've spent years tying up and gagging and locking away in a forgotten corner of our mind. Often more than one must be captured. They try to corrupt us with their mediocrity and platitudes, yet we resist and round them back into their cells.

As time passes our guard goes down, or perhaps was never on duty to begin with, and the prisoners run amuck and infect our poetry or our prose. In an effort to subdue them, we have to be vigilant and know what they look like.

I give you, the ten writers that suck:

1. The Egoist: This writer's motto is: I write for myself. This lexical masturbator never realizes that writing is communication, a method of conveyance. Without an audience, there is no point, and writing becomes a complete waste of time.The Egoist never gets that his time would be better spent doing something else. Grammar is oppressive and rules don't apply to me. He never learns to first communicate, but instead is only interested in emptying his own thoughts on paper regardless if anyone else can understand them.Rules are often avoided to such an extreme that he needs to create new rules to make sure he avoids the establishment's. Reading the Egoist's work is like listening to a speech given by someone without any lips.

2. The Grammar Nazi: She believes in a perfect grammar, and will go out of her way to destroy those she feels are imperfect. Or she may only believe in one grammar and may not even realize that many exist. Her bigotry is ruthless and often makes her work rigid and stoic. Her words are cold, distant, and sterile; and she will eventually have to resort to writing instruction manuals to supplement her income.

3. The Transcendentalist: He can be identified by his lifetime commitment to his masterpiece, even though a good year's honest hard work would have produced better results. For him, writing is art (said with an ethereal voice). But he never goes on to define art. The Transcendentalist can never exactly tell you where words come from, because he is a conduit, an empty vessel. At least his head is. The Transcendentalist waits around for something to happen and invented the superstition of writer's block.

4. The Artist: She's more interested in being a writer than actually doing any writing. She talks a good talk, but put a pencil in her hand and all she can do is break the lead.The Artist is more fun at parties than a real writer because she frequents them so much she never gets anything done. The only downside of her writing career is that she cannot tolerate those hours where she must be alone with herself and write.

5. The Expositionist: He starts, interludes, and ends by describing every minute detail in his work. Most of what he writes has little to no relevance to the story or the theme, but he judges quality by detail. He's the guy at the party nobody wants to talk to because he has a talent for saying so little with a great many words.

6. The Diarrhetic Writer: Sister to the Expositionist, she is a mindless spout of diarrhetic verbosity. While the Expositionist is compelled by detail, the Diarrhetic Writer is compelled only by words. Her parents call her prolific, but her writing is inane and nonsensical and delivered in mass quantity. She's the author of the never-ending story.

7. The Premature Ejaculator: This over-eager author finishes too quick. Perhaps the polar opposite of the Expositionist, he lacks any setup whatsoever. The audience gets a finish, but no satisfaction. If his problem stems from ignorance, then his conclusion lacks motive. If his problem stems from delusion, then his conclusion is a gimmick. In either case the reader feels cheated.

8. The Moralist: She has lots of time to write because nobody invites her to parties. She writes with a mission and only tells one side of the story. She makes the improbable probable in order to support her sermon. She's often the most important character in her stories.

9. What's-His-Name: He loves pronouns and hates antecedents. He calls his abstractness post-modern rather than admit it's lazy, vague, and tedious. His reader must often invent the parts he leaves out.

10. The Writer with Tourette's: If she's lucky, then her words are plagued with profanity. Overly indulgent fuck's, pussy's, and cocksucker's can sometimes pass off as in vogue. The most damning are the banal really's, so's, and there's; the words that don't even insult.