Learning From My Own Bad Writing

One important idea I have learned while writing is that, sometimes, a story just does not go anywhere. I sat down recently and hammered out a first draft of a story that does not really have much of a future. However, I do not consider the time I spent writing it to be wasted, and I am glad I wrote the story from beginning to end because it wound up teaching me a little about how I should not write.
First, I tried writing without any outlining beforehand. I know a few writers claim to write without outlining, but I find that, for me, this is a recipe for disaster. I started out with a blank piece of paper and decided I was just going to write and see what developed. If I started worrying along the way about "What exactly is this character's personality," or "Where is this plot going," I shelved those thoughts and kept writing. I trusted that everything would work out organically. It did not.
Without a clear sense of who my characters were, I wrote "people" who perform basic tasks but have no identities. This possibly seemed less glaring to me at the moment because characters like this seem to pop up a lot in horror/fantasy stories. Then again, I could not even say that I had written archetypes; no one was the "final girl" in my story.
I also spent no time planning a story arc, instead trusting that I could build it from scene to scene. And to my credit, when I re-read the draft I did feel like the forward momentum from scene to scene was pretty coherent. But, again, nothing of substance was happening. My story might have developed organically, but not into anything I would enjoy reading had someone else written it. It had its share of plot points that got dropped as it went along, and it thundered toward a pretty "Meh" ending.
Still, even if no amount of revising ever turns the story into something publishable, I feel better for having written it. For one, I taught myself to always outline beforehand, or else my stories will stagger randomly forward. Also, take the time to really plan out who my characters are, rather than allow them to reveal themselves as I write. Third, sometimes I write poorly, but seeing it through as far as I can still gives me a sense of accomplishment. Even if the story never makes it through another full revision, I set out to write a beginning, middle, and an end, and I accomplished my goal. So always, always, keep writing.