THE ART OF WRITING

We are the Best of Worst Writers; We are the Worst of Worst of Writers

by Ingrid Gabriel

posted 07/02/2009
Citizens of Washington, this is a proudful event in our literary history and another jewel in the crown for Evergreen State wordsmiths. Federal Way resident David McKenzie has just been awarded the coveted first prize in the 2009 Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, also known as the Dark and Stormy Night Contest. To him, we extend a lusty Huzzah!

McKenzie, a 55-year-old Quality Systems consultant and writer has formerly won the Western and Children's Literature categories and is the 27th Grand Prize winner of the contest that began at San Jose State University in 1982.

According to contest creator, Scott Rice, Dark and Stormy is an international literary parody competition that "honors the memory (if not the reputation) of Victorian novelist Edward George Earl Bulwer-Lytton (1803-1873). The goal of the contest is childishly simple: entrants are challenged to submit bad opening sentences to imaginary novels. Although best known for "The Last Days of Pompeii" (1834), which has been made into a movie three times, originating the expression "the pen is mightier than the sword," and phrases like "the great unwashed" and "the almighty dollar," Bulwer-Lytton opened his novel Paul Clifford (1830) with the immortal words that the "Peanuts" beagle Snoopy plagiarized for years, 'It was a dark and stormy night.'"

McKenzie's masterful entry:
"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."

Runner-Up
"The wind dry-shaved the cracked earth like a dull razor--the double edge kind from the plastic bag that you shouldn't use more than twice, but you do; but Trevor Earp had to face it as he started the second morning of his hopeless search for Drover, the Irish Wolfhound he had found as a pup near death from a fight with a prairie dog and nursed back to health, stolen by a traveling circus so that the monkey would have something to ride."

- Warren Blair Ashburn, VA

Honorable Mentions, Dishonorable Mentions and Special Awards winners can be found at www.bulwer-lytton.com/.

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