it was a dark and stormy night the results

are in! man i LOVE this contest. it always has me in tears. i've not read them all yet, but i will throughout the day

if you're in need of some cheering up, you should read them as well

Screamin' seafaring tale wins bad writing contest
The Associated Press

SAN JOSE, Calif. -- A shambling sentence about screaming seafarers on the sturdy whaler Ellie May stood shoulders above the rest in an annual bad writing contest. David McKenzie, 55, of Federal Way, Wash., won the grand prize in San Jose State University's annual Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest with this:

"Folks say that if you listen real close at the height of the full moon, when the wind is blowin' off Nantucket Sound from the nor' east and the dogs are howlin' for no earthly reason, you can hear the awful screams of the crew of the "Ellie May," a sturdy whaler Captained by John McTavish; for it was on just such a night when the rum was flowin' and, Davey Jones be damned, big John brought his men on deck for the first of several screaming contests."............

and here are the rest of the bulwer-lytton 2009 results oh heck here's the runner-up in the science fiction category:

George scratched his head in abject puzzlement as he tried to figure out where he'd parked the rocket this time in the 100-acre parking lot of Nallmart 75B, but then he remembered that a ship-boy had taken his DNA key-but which one, the kelly toned humanoid or the atmosphere-of-Rylak-hued android; scanning the horizon, he at last turned to Babs and asked "how green was my valet"?

Leigh A. Smith
New Douglas, IL

it was a dark and stormy night........

i love this contest and try never to miss the winning entry. this year, as usual, it's OUTSTANDING
there are MANY good entries. i was howling. the link to the entries is in the article link below. do read them. it WILL brighten YOUR day


And the winner of the worst writing of 2008 is ...



SAN JOSE, California (AP) -- A grotesque comparison of a steamy love affair to a New York City street has won a Washington man this year's grand prize in an annual contest of bad writing.
Garrison Spik, a 41-year-old communications director and writer, took top honors in San Jose State University's 26th annual Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest with this opening sentence to a nonexistent novel:
"Theirs was a New York love, a checkered taxi ride burning rubber, and like the city their passion was open 24/7, steam rising from their bodies like slick streets exhaling warm, moist, white breath through manhole covers stamped 'Forged by DeLaney Bros., Piscataway, N.J."'...............

a little update from today's (friday) wapo

Purple Prose? His Is Truly Bruising

By Monica Hesse

Washington Post Staff Writer

The results for the 26th annual Bulwer-Lytton contest were announced last week, and for the first time, the winner is a Washingtonian.

And the Bulwer-Lytton is . . .

"It's like the Nobel Prize for Literature," explains 2008 recipient Garrison Spik, whose day job is communications director for Mervis Diamond Importers. "But at the other end of the spectrum. And the prize money is $999,750 less."

The Bulwer-Lytton, in fact, rewards the most wretched, the most inept, the most fantastically awful abuses of English writing. The kind of language that should be taken out and shot. Each year applicants submit putrefying one-sentence openings to bogus novels; this year Spik's was chosen from some 8,000 entries.......

photo: Garrison Spik had "a big pile of literary dung to choose from." (By Kevin Clark -- The Washington Post)