Writing challenges

Not all of you may feel up to the job of cranking out 50,000 words over the course of the thirty days which hath November. But there are still things you might want to consider, brief compositions, which like the finest cameos are small, delicate and perfectly formed.

For example,

The Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest

Where “WWW” means “Wretched Writers Welcome”

Named in dishonor of Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, who (not Snoopy, as too many suppose) in his 1830 novel, Paul Clifford, began with those stirring words

“It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents — except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness.” 

the contest is for those who wish to submit the worst possible opening line they can compose.

To quote the website, "The official deadline is April 15 (a date that Americans associate with painful submissions and making up bad stories). The actual deadline is June 30."

Visit the website for more information. Be sure to click on the tab for Contest Winners to sample genius such as these:

 "She strutted into my office wearing a dress that clung to her like Saran Wrap to a sloppily butchered pork knuckle, bone and sinew jutting and lurching asymmetrically beneath its folds, the tightness exaggerating the granularity of the suet and causing what little palatable meat there was to sweat, its transparency the thief of imagination."  
~ Chris Wieloch, Brookfield, WI -- 2013 Winner

 "Seeing how the victim's body, or what remained of it, was wedged between the grill of the Peterbilt 389 and the bumper of the 2008 Cadillac Escalade EXT, officer "Dirk" Dirksen wondered why reporters always used the phrase "sandwiched" to describe such a scene since there was nothing appetizing about it, but still, he thought, they might have a point because some of this would probably end up on the front of his shirt."
~ Joel Phillips, West Trenton, NJ -- 2015 Winner