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Computer Analyst Wins Best Worst Writing Contest
pmadden writes "Dan McKay, a friend from years ago, has won a prestigious literary award. I've enjoyed technical manuals over the years, but never like this. Who would have guessed that such great writing would come from the grad of a small technical school."
My first reaction after seeing the 2005 results pages is that if the people who run this thing want to keep it going, they might invest a little more design thought into their work. Yes, even though they only do it out of love and don't get a nickel for it.
My second feeling is, despite the burden of reading a lot more bad prose, they should go back to a paragraph rather than a sentence. Many of the entries of note were more silly than really horrible and I think requiring the writer to write a coherent paragraph would produce better (erm, I mean worse) results.
By the way, if you want more info on the history of the contest, go to the the Bulwer-Lytton home page .
Having served on the editing staff of my high school literary magazine for three years, I remember reading a good number of terribly cliched opening lines. We had several entries each year that started "It was a dark and stormy night" and ended with their own horrible writing. Once or twice the ending was a simple period, as in "It was a dark and stormy night." We discovered that many young writers believed that this line was the official start of a short story or novel.
As a 16-year-old poet, I forced myself away from my natural tendencies to rhyme such breakthrough combinations as heart/apart, love/above, and crying/dying. Once I got into Eliot and Cummings, I mostly forgot about rhyming altogether. Can't say the same for most submissions we had...
"The pen is mightier than the sword" is also a Bulwer-Lytton quote. It's funny that people quote him as an example of wisdom while attaching his name to bad writing contests.
What's even funnier is that it's so out of context as to be nearly a misquote. He wrote "Beneath the rule of men entirely great, the pen is mightier than the sword". I've never seen a better description of good government.
Have you ever danced with the devil in the pale moonlight?
True confidence comes not from realising you are as good as your peers, but that your peers are as bad as you are.