Bad beginnings

(Psst! HEY! Did you enter my contest? You could win a signed copy of Bad Girls Don’t Die for you AND a friend! All you have to do is comment!)

It’s that time of year again! The results of the 2010 Bulwer-Lytton contest are in! If you’ve never heard of it, it’s a “writing” contest where people submit worst first lines of imaginary novels.

It actually takes a lot of skill to write so badly and well all at the same time. Here are my two favorites, both from the “Miscellaneous Dishonorable Mentions” section:

His chest glistened like a pumpkin seed, either one fresh out of the pumpkin but with all the orange strands of pumpkin flesh removed, or one straight out of the oven after being coated in just the right amount of oil and then baked; the point is that it was smooth, fairly shiny, and that color.

Jesse Kolman
Phoenix, AZ

Leaning back comfortably in a plush old chair, feet up, fingers laced behind his head, Tom Chambers inventoried his life and with a satisfied grin mused, “Ah, marlin fishing off the coast of Majorca, a bronze star for that rescue mission in Jamir, the unmatched fragrance of pastries fresh out of the oven at Café Legrande, two sons who would make any father proud . . . I’ve never done any of that.”

Ernie Santilli
Drexel Hill PA

Find the whole shebang right here.

Add comment June 30th, 2010

Secrets of the control panel…

Apparently, at various times, I have started to compose a blog entry and then found that I didn’t have time or the proper inspiration or whatever, and just saved it as a draft.

Without exaggeration or editing, here is a fascinating (or should I say “fascinating”) selection of items from my blog’s “drafts” folder.

Fun With Post Titles
“NaNoWriMo: so this is why you’re all ignoring me.”
“Katie Alender, mistress of the omelette de micro-onde”
“The plague and other fun things”
And an empty post entitled “Wednesday thoughts”

Fun With Unfinished Posts
In my old neighborhood…
When we heard helicopters, it was because someone was setting off fireworks in the alley and someone else thought it was gunshots.
In my new neighborhood, when we hear helicopters, it’s because somewhere Britney Spears is spiraling a little bit deeper.

Voila…
Dear Internet and all who use it,
The word is not “walah” or “walla” or “woila”. It is “voila,” with a “v,”

I like rules.
There, I said it.

Five Things You Will Never Find in My House
(1) Floating toilets.

(After a significant, “What the taco truck?” moment on finding that particular draft, I realized that I meant, I will never have a toilet that doesn’t rest on the floor, the kind that is just stuck into the wall and hangs there. And I find myself agreeing with that statement, no matter how odd it might have sounded, left all by itself in a forgotten blog entry.)

Names.
Bad Girls Don’t Die

(Um, yup, that should just about do it.)

And we’re off!
First, check out these awesome squirrels.

(Except “check out these awesome squirrels” was a link and now it’s BROKEN and I’m DYING to know about the awesome squirrels. Ugh.)

And, in conclusion, I found an unfinished post where apparently I had decided to create poems out of sentences I found on other people’s blogs that happened to catch my fancy. Such as this little masterpizza unwittingly written by my good author friend Eileen Cook (I’m sure she won’t mind):

I would like
to go on the record
that while I’m sure my parents
had my best interests at heart,
it is quite possible
that I would prefer not to work,
and have things just given to me.

PS – Don’t forget to enter my mini-contest!

1 comment March 11th, 2010

Wednesday music meme!

For Wednesday, a little music meme! Feel free to post at your own blog and link to it! Would love to see everybody else’s answers. Some of mine are kind of spooky (and some are hilarious, as you will see).

In fact, contest! Post this meme at your own blog between now and Friday and leave a comment with a link… everyone who plays along will be entered in a drawing for a handmade bag! If you’ve recently won a contest, enter away–if you win, just choose a friend to get the prize.

Instructions: Go to your music player of choice and put it on shuffle. Say the following questions aloud, and press play. Use the song title as the answer to the question.

How does the world see you?
Can’t Get Enough of Your Love, Babe (Barry White)

Will I have a happy life?
Perfect Love (Trisha Yearwood)

What do my friends really think of me?
Never Gonna Give You Up (Rick Astley)

What do people secretly think of me?
I’m in the Way (Jars of Clay) — HEY!

How can I be happy?
One Chance (Modest Mouse)

What should I do with my life?
Paper in Fire (John Cougar Mellencamp)

Will I ever have children?
You Raise Me Up (Josh Groban)

What is some good advice for me?
I Wanna Be Free (The Monkees)

How will I be remembered?
Expectations (Belle & Sebastian)

What is my signature dancing song?
There’s No Living Without Your Loving (Peter and Gordon)

What do I think my current theme song is?
Over the Rainbow (Judy Garland)

What does everyone else think my current theme song is?
I Need a Lover (John Cougar Mellencamp) — HA HA HA HA HA

What song will play at my funeral?
You’re Going to Lose That Girl (The Beatles)

What type of men/women do you like?
Auguries of Innocence, Pt. 1 (Paul Schwartz)

What is my day going to be like?
Why Not Smile (R.E.M.)

The Daily Plah: Day 10
Currently reading: SuperFreakonomics and The Wednesday Sisters
Song of the day: I Wanna Be Free by The Monkees–even before it came up as an answer for the meme!
Other notable facts: Having lunch today with a friend I haven’t seen since high school, even though we’ve lived in the same city for years.

5 comments March 10th, 2010

Is it just me, or…

…is everything funnier when it’s a night club?

Okay, so here’s what I’m doing these days: writing. I wish I could say it were more exciting than that, but it’s not.

I also did a guest blog for Vania over at Reverie Book Reviews… check it out! You could win a brown and pink bag, which I will post a picture of as soon as I fix my sewing machine and find 10 minutes to finish it.

Happy Thursday!

8 comments October 15th, 2009

And the winner is… (dubious honors revealed!)

(Pre-script: come on over to the Debutante Ball today and tell us what decorates your walls!)

New business:

Congratulations to the contest winner, #19, Tashiana Hudson! Tashiana will get a signed copy of , plus a custom-made tote bag and eye pillow. Woohoo!

Thanks for all the entries, everyone. I must say, your worst last lines alternately cracked me up and left me totally shuddering (often both).

First of all, the “It was just a dream” entries made me wonder if there has ever been a good use of that phrase to end a story. That seems like a challenge for somebody. Maybe we’ll have a flash fiction contest or something!

But Jason really took it to another level, one that hurt his brain to write and all of our brains to read:

“But, alas, it was merely a vividly experienced dream, where the allusion that was surprisingly witnessed seemed so incredibly real to him, so happily not true, that, irregardless of what may have secretly transpired between Olivia and the creepily mysterious Mr. Alfonso, the affect of the dream was so obviously fake, that it seemed so surprisingly real, but luckily, was not real at all. Or was it??”

Jo?lle Anthony’s last line almost doesn’t qualify, because it sounds suspiciously to me like a very GOOD last line:

“And then he ate the very last piece of chocolate in the entire world without even giving me a bite.”

TheCompulsiveReader’s is another suspiciously good bad line:

“And so after slaying the magnificently evil dragon, the prince and his princess lived happily ever after (except for that one time two months later when the dragon?s cousin?s nephew came to seek revenge, thus distracting the prince so that evil gnomes could kidnap the princess, and for a whole year everything was in turmoil and there was that weird thing that happened with this one fairy, but other than that, it was pretty much happily ever after).”

Laina’s cracked me up:

“They all died, the end.”

And I think Laura deserves a shout-out because the line leading up to her last line, which was not creative writing but apparnetly the sad truth, sounds like a great worst last line to em:

“First of all I?m not even sure what the date is or even what time it is. My computer is stuck in the twilight zone of travel and someday I?ll remember that jet lag and alcohol don?t mix.”

And lastly, my author buddy Robin Brande (whose new book, Fat Cat sounds really good and comes out this fall), entered the contest without reading the deadline and therefore is out of the running for the tote bag and eye pillow but DEFINITELY deserves a mention for her awesomely dreadful writing skillz (it takes a good writer to write this badly, folks):

“He slapped me then shouted, ?Slap yourself!? which I did because this wasn?t the first nor the last time I?d been other-directed self-slapped and I was beyond my amateur status at it by now even though everything else in my life has stopped short of perfection or even near-adequacy, so I heard myself slap, slap, SLAP! and felt pale if not red-faced satisfaction at the love we were going to continue to explore, each in our way, each alone as we forged a life together, strangers stranger than perhaps we were even willing to admit to ourselves or the media, in love though we were, completely and totally forevermore, just us and the dogs and the simple one-legged cat.

The End. Forevermore.

Or is it???”

And thank you all for sharing the endings that spoke to you! Some of those were books I’ve read, and some I hadn’t heard of. I’ll be sure to check them out!

I don’t know if I shared an ending that stayed with me, so I thought I’d do that now. It’s from one of my favorite books, “Fair and Tender Ladies,” which is by a woman named Lee Smith and is just a fantastic piece of writing. The heroine/narrator, Ivy Fox, is reflecting back over her life, starting with her childhood in a poor Appalachian mining community.

“The hawks fly round and round, the sky is so blue. I think I can hear the old bell ringing like I rang it to call them home oh I was young then, and I walked in my body like a queen.”

4 comments July 14th, 2009

It was a dark and stormy… CONTEST!

Ah, it’s that time of year! Bulwer-Lytton Worst First Line contest results are out (CLICK HERE to read them all)! This is a contest held every year in which entrants try to write the worst possible first line to a novel. A Paperback Writer had the link posted over yonder on her blog. I have to say, maybe I’m not in a laugh out loud mood today, but usually there are at least three or four that make me snort. This year, not so much.

Here are a few of my favorites from this year’s list of winners (…and keep reading for THE CONTEST!):

The serrated butter knife tossed capriciously onto the 38th Street sidewalk amid the detritus of Salem cigarette butts and a Mentos box was devoid of zero trans fat margarine, but glinted invitingly in the sunlight nonetheless, poised for the opportunity to be repurposed to cut up a Snuggie, and Vladimir took it.
Amy E. Gross
Fair Lawn, NJ

After quickly scrutinizing the two dangerously buff men coming toward her in the dark and wondering whether she could take them both out, P.I. Velma Plusch mentally inventoried her arsenal-two pistols, two stiletto-clad feet, two leather-gloved hands, two each eyes, ears, lips, and breasts-and decided that she could.
Donna Kain, Ph.D.
Greenville, NC

She walked into my office on legs as long as one of those long-legged birds that you see in Florida – the pink ones, not the white ones – except that she was standing on both of them, not just one of them, like those birds, the pink ones, and she wasn’t wearing pink, but I knew right away that she was trouble, which those birds usually aren’t.
Eric Rice
Sun Prairie, WI

So… CONTEST TIME!

Let’s talk LAST LINES. Or, to be more general, endings. To enter this contest, do one of the following things:

(1) In the style of the Bulwer-Lytton contest, hit me with your worst LAST line for a book; or

(2) Tell me about a book ending that really resonated with you (bonus points if it’s mine–HA, just kidding)

WHAT YOU WIN: An autographed copy of BAD GIRLS DON’T DIE, an eye pillow and a tote bag, which I will custom make based on your taste in fabrics. If you already have any portion of these items, you can angel them to someone else. Won’t that be fun? Aren’t you such a generous person!

HOW TO WIN: Everyone who comments with one of the two entry styles above will be entered in a drawing. One entry per person. Writing a worst last line gives you a chance to be shouted-out and glorified in front of everyone else, though.

THE DEETS: The contest ends at 11:59 p.m. Pacific Friday, July 10. Unfortunately, only folks in the U.S. and Canada can win the actual prizes… but if you’re international, how about entering anyway and gifting your prize to somebody Stateside?

Please come play! Hurray!

29 comments July 2nd, 2009

This just in…

Another great video from a friend.

Enjoy!

4 comments October 20th, 2008

Wait!! I was wrong about the Olympics!

EDIT: Aw, durn! I can’t believe they took the video offline. Boo! Hiss!

And Matt Lauer and Al Roker showed me just how wrong I was.

14 comments August 20th, 2008

Questionable beginnings…

When the vicissitudes of everyday life fill you with such ennui that your only outlet is the angry, screaming, overcrowded information highways of the blogosphere–even though you know that among those millions of dim bulbs, there are precious few who truly grok what you’re striving to convey, and even those few who may be so brilliant are indubitably struggling with their own isolation and so don’t have the time to read about your dog, your trip to the vet, the guy who was rude to you in traffic yesterday–and you sigh and realize that you can put off sharing the shrieking pain of everyday existence and just blog about the Bulwer-Lytton 2008 Bad First Line results.

* * * * *

God bless you if you made it through that paragraph! I could hardly get through the typing of it. I just thought I should stay on topic today.

I forgot to enter this year, but somehow the contest went on without me, and the results are out. Please click here to read some truly wonderfully heinous bad first lines. (Bulwer-Lytton is a contest named after the man who first penned the line, “It was a dark and stormy night.” Every year, people do their best to write the worst opening lines.)

This year’s include plenty of bad’uns! Here are just a couple of my favorites:

Nobody knew just who the steely-eyed stranger was, where he came from, where he was headed, or what his intentions were while he was in Dodge City; but he wasn’t an hombre you’d want to stick your tongue out at or flip off, and any man who tried to tickle him would be asking for a long stay in a pine box, if you know what I mean.
David McKenzie
Federal Way, WA

Watching Felicia walk into the bar was like watching two fat Rottweilers in yellow spandex and spike heels that had treed a scrawny bleach blond cat at the top of a skinny flagpole that for some reason had decided to sprout casaba melons.
Melissa Alliston
Coraopolis, PA

I heard her husky breathing as she came up the stairs, breathing exactly the way a sled dog breathes after competing in the Iditatrod as she sauntered into the room her hips swiveling from side to side like a Sherman M-4 tank with a 75mm gun forcing its way through the hedgerows of Normandy after D-Day in 1944.
Bruce Hannem
Citrus Heights CA

It was common knowledge around town that Bill drank like a fish, the kind of fish that consumes large quantities of cheap scotch on a daily basis.
Brent Sheppard
Morganton, NC

5 comments August 15th, 2008

Oho, you clever Brits! (& garden adventures)

(Pre-P.S. – Did you see my big news?)

Intrigued by the title of this article (“Why Dying Is Forbidden in the Arctic”) by Duncan Bartlett, I went ahead and read it. It’s a cute little profile of a small town in Norway–discussing everything from the answer to the titular question to the ever-present threat of polar bears.

And even though it’s a spoiler, I have to quote it, because it cracked me up:

If you are unarmed when you encounter a bear, toss your mittens on the snow in the hope of distracting it.

At which point, I suppose, you could try reminding the bear that it is forbidden to die in Longyearbyen and hope it shows respect for local law.

Well, it is Day 4 in the Owl Bag Suspense Vigil, and still no sign of the search for the digital camera. The problem is, I think I remember where I left it, but it isn’t there, and now I’m too lazy to keep looking. Am I being too honest? The owl bag isn’t getting any dirtier or anything, so it should be all good.

The husb and I are trying to eat healthier, and as such, today I’m going to harvest some of my speckled butter lettuce and make little tuna wraps for lunch. This is assuming many things: (1) that the squirrels haven’t eaten it, (2) that it tastes reasonably good, (3) that it hasn’t withered and died in a heat wave. However, if all of those assumptions are true, it will be a true moment of triumph, since I grew the butter lettuce from seed and it actually seemed to be thriving, last time I checked.

I can be so lax because we ingeniously moved all the potted plants to the stairs, so the sprayover from the automatic sprinklers waters them, and I kind of stay out of it. The plants really do much better without me. It’s kind of pitiful. For instance, the first thing I tried to grow was bell peppers, from seed. None of them really took. But my mint seemed to be thriving, which was nice. Until I noticed that the mint wasn’t mint–it was a bell pepper seed that sprouted brilliantly behind my back and grew enormous. (Still no peppers, but I have hope.)

See, some of these things really demand photos. Guess I’d better look for the camera. Shoot. (No pun intended!)

Happy Monday!

[Edited update: the squirrels did get to the lettuce. But they didn't destroy it. They just nibbled a corner of every piece, to make sure none of it was poisoned. Which was very kind of them. So I'm going to eat it anyway, and just cut off the nibbled bits.]

9 comments July 14th, 2008