Looking for a good New Year's resolution? Or several?  My plan is to make a bunch of resolutions, to improve the chances of keeping at least a couple of them.

I'm just beginning to make my own list. In addition to resolving to finish my current novel, I'm starting a list of resolutions that all involve creative fun. For example, I plan to enter the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest again.  I've never been a winner in this contest, but it's great fun just to play along.

Since 1982 the English Department at San Jose State University has sponsored the contest, “a whimsical literary competition that challenges entrants to compose the opening sentence to the worst of all possible novels.” One of my favorite websites is www.bulwer-lytton.com, “where WWW means Wretched Writers Welcome.”

The contest honors Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, the Victorian novelist best known for penning the opening to Paul Clifford (1830), an opening much beloved by Charles Schulz and his cartoon beagle, Snoopy:

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.

As if you needed more than those immortal words to inspire you, go to the website to read the deathless prose of some of the recent contest winners. Here's the winning entry in the 2009  Detective Fiction division, submitted by Eric Rice from Sun Prairie, Wisconsin:

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.

And here's the 2004 winner, worth revisiting:

She resolved to end the love affair with Ramon tonight . . . summarily, like Martha Stewart ripping the sand vein out of a shrimp’s tail . . . though the term “love affair” now struck her as a ridiculous euphemism . . . not unlike “sand vein,” which is after all an intestine, not a vein . . . and that tarry substance inside certainly isn’t sand . . . and that brought her back to Ramon.

But why let others have all the fun? Here's a hopeful entry that I submitted to an earlier Bulwer-Lytton contest:

Brittney took one look at his chiseled face and taut muscles and knew she had to have him, maybe not right there in the kitchen section of Macy’s with its cold floor and bright lights and dozens of people milling around, but soon, before the day was through, before he took off his employee badge that said “Todd” and went home and she would never see him again and would die of a broken heart, unless, of course, she went back to Macy’s the next day and hung out in the kitchen section, like some stalker, although she wasn’t, or was she, but if she bought something while waiting for him then they couldn’t arrest her as a stalker, and after all she did need a new spatula, one of those good plastic ones that won’t hurt the Teflon, and maybe a new dishwasher for her new life with Todd, although that would be in large appliances, and maybe at the end of the mall at Sears, where Todd didn’t work.

And here's another entry I submitted for the Detective division:

I was sitting back in my chair, my feet up on the desk, one eye on the cool neon lights coming on outside my office window in the steamy summer night, the other eye on the gat I was cleaning, when the doll walked in, a dame with legs that made me want to know their owner better and buy whatever she was selling, even if it was Girl Scout cookies, although I wouldn’t buy all the cookies, just the Thin Mints and Peanut Butter Patties, and maybe a box of Caramel Delits.

Historical fiction, anyone? Here's an opening sentence I wrote and submitted for the contest.  Although it didn't excite the judges, it warms my heart to read it once again.

For as long as she could remember, fair Guinevere had preferred the sunny, cheerful boys, the ones who would smile and chat easily and make her laugh when they came calling, with nary a complaint about the cold, damp castle where she lived (for it is in Camelot that our scene lies), and thus was she unprepared for the dramatic appearance one evening at the castle door of a surly but handsome stranger, his arrival accompanied by the deep bass of rolling thunder, his swarthy visage illuminated by heavenly bolts of lightning, and she knew deep in her heart and loins what she had been missing all these years, for indeed it was a dark and stormy knight.

Tags: Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest

This entry was posted on Monday, December 28th, 2009 at 12:05 am and is filed under Humor, Writing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.