I wish I’d appreciated more when I was younger and involved in the fanfic world how something can be “bad writing” in the sense that it doesn’t work as a piece of literature, but good in what it’s doing for the writer.
Especially (but not only) for very young writers, fiction can be a badly needed escape or a way to work through their own problems in metaphor. A girl who feels invisible and unloved in the real world can write a version of herself that’s a half-unicorn half-faerie princess with every magic power simultaneously, and whether it’s narratively strong or not, it means something to her that she can be that princess in her story. A person who has no other outlet for their sexuality can write awful “lol, what even is anatomy” porn as part of the process of feeling out what they want and who they are. A boy who’s afraid to express softness and vulnerability in the real world can write unbearably melodramatic and glurgey hurt/comfort fic, and find in it the tenderness that’s inside him.
And 99% of these stories will be awful and unreadable and embarrassing, just as 99% of therapy session transcripts wouldn’t make good one-act plays. But that’s okay. They serve a purpose beyond conventional literature, and while you may not necessarily want to read them, you should still respect that purpose.
This is so important.