Screamin' seafaring tale wins bad writing contest

[steven johnson]

I do enjoy writing badly, ungramatically and with run on sentences that just won't end; life is too short to waste a good writing surface.

The Associated Press
Monday, June 29, 2009; 8:48 PM

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."

The contest, a parody of prose, invites entrants to submit bad opening sentences to imaginary novels. It is named after Victorian writer Edward George Earl Bulwer-Lytton, who opened his 1830 novel "Paul Clifford," with the much-quoted, "It was a dark and stormy night ..."

Contest categories include purple prose and vile puns.



Screamin' seafaring tale wins bad writing contest

[Orrex]

1. "Vile puns." Love it!

Not sure about your link, though.