Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Rapparee
Date: 20 Jun 03 - 08:40 PM

She turned her head, her mouth slightly open and her eyes slightly closed. Her need was so great, it had been so long. Her hands reached out, guided by the warmth of the desire in her belly. She knew that this was the time, this would satiate the animal-like lust burning within her.

Spread before her like a sacrifice against creamy linen. Slowly, slowly she told herself. Savor it, let it flow through you. Her lips parted and she spoke, her mouth dry.

"Peas? I don't like peas! Waiter!"

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Amos
Date: 20 Jun 03 - 07:33 PM

Half reasonable, but only half fast living. Hmmmmmmm?

A

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Little Hawk
Date: 20 Jun 03 - 06:48 PM

Ha! Ha! Poor, naive princess.

I think my having a vasectomy at this point would be a redundant exercise, Amos. I've gotten to the age of 54 without leaving any progeny (legitimate or otherwise) in this world, so why bother now? Besides, I'm not really inclined to seek such liasons anymore...it's too much emotional complication and gets seriously in the way of managing the rest of my life in a half reasonable fashion. I know this from hard experience. No pun intended.

- LH

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Amos
Date: 20 Jun 03 - 04:36 PM

From another, similar contest:

1.) "The sun oozed over the horizon, shoved aside darkness, crept along the
greensward, and, with sickly fingers, pushed through the castle window,
revealing the pillaged princess, hand at throat, crown asunder, gaping in frenzied horror at the sated, sodden amphibian lying beside her, disbelieving the magnitude of the frog's deception, screaming madly, "You lied!'"

A

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Amos
Date: 20 Jun 03 - 10:47 AM

LH, you obviously have some overblown masochism in your own makeup, deep down. Hope you're well supplied with hamsters. Have you considered a vasectomy?

A

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: GUEST,noddy
Date: 20 Jun 03 - 10:40 AM

As we walked down the corridors of the hallowed Instiute a famed scientist was coming to the end of his life's work...........


KAABOOOMM!


Sorry I cannot claim credit for that one.

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Little Hawk
Date: 20 Jun 03 - 09:32 AM

I love these sweat-drenched, moronic forays into masculine stupidity... (Sergeant Calhound is still trying to extract that 14-inch shell out of his big fat mouth.)

More, Noddy, more!

- LH

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: GUEST,noddy
Date: 20 Jun 03 - 05:08 AM

The sun beat down relentlessly on Pete's back. It had been two hours or constant effort,blood pumping,energy sapping muscle cramping effort. His clothes which gave little protection to the suns rays were salt caked from his dried sweat.He tasted salt on his lips. He tasted salt when he wipped his brow. On and on and on he went. Feet pounding on the ground ,a machine in motion but only just. Around him he heard noises. The sounds of people, distant discordant music, the sound of pounding feet following him. They must not get closer he thought and strained his lean frame for one final effort. The pain surged through every sinue. His heart thumped in his head faster and faster, harder and harder. He must go on faster . The noise grew louder and louder. He knew it would all end soon. One way or the other . For better or worse. But he had to try for there was so much at stake. For a moment he thought he would make it could make it. It would be close, very very close. Now or never and he threw himself forward, collapsing in a heap. He looked back. They were not far behind. The noise seemed to have stopped ,time stopped .He gazed upward "NO. NO. No". he screamed. All his effort was in vain he had missed the record by point 2 of a second. His trainer came over and picked him up "Never mind Pete. Back in training. There is another Marathon at the end of next month.I am sure you will break the record then."

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Amos
Date: 19 Jun 03 - 11:38 PM

You guys are REALLY bad!! I am awed with the TRANSCENDENT MEDIOCRITY of your masterful decompositions!!

Like, wow, man!! That sums it all up in a nutshell.

Like, wow.


A

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Little Hawk
Date: 19 Jun 03 - 10:00 PM

He more and more had the feeling that he had always been at war, always been mired in this stinking foxhole on this godforsaken piece of mosquito-infested rat trap ten cent cannibal-infested island, listening to hysterical little yellow Nip bastards yelling "Babe Ruth sucks!" from across the river. The little slant-eyed fanatics had already made fifteen fullscale assaults since dusk, leaving the ground strewn with hundreds of corpses. They hung on the barbed wire in front of his position, grotesque and silent now in death, but their shrill battlecries still rang in his aching ears. "American you dai-eeee!!! Ban-zaa-eeee!!! Death to Woolworth's!!!" He couldn't get those voices out of his head. Why did they keep coming? What could impell that sort of suicidal yen for self-destruction. Why did they dislike the greatest country on Earth? Why were they denigrating the World's finest baseball player? Why did they say unprintable things about Eleanour Roosevelt's sex life and culinary proclivities?

"They're dirty, stinkin' Japs, that's why!" he cursed aloud, answering his own mental question. "The little fuckers ain't human!"

"What's that, Sarge?" asked the Kid, edging closer. The Kid looked scared. Real scared. He was only nineteen. Any minute now he might shit his pants.

"I said the little fuckers ain't human!" spat the Sergeant, chomping down viciously on his unlit and somewhat sodden Cuban cigar. "Ace! Gimme a light."

Ace let go of the ammo belt and struck a match.

300 feet away private Nishimura squinted down the sights of his sniper rifle and gently squeezed the trigger...

The report seemed to arrive just after the bullet, which went in the left side of Ace's head and exited under his right eye. Ace dropped like a sack of flour.

"Shit!!!" yelled the Sergeant. "I told you guys once, I told you a thousand times...DON'T SHOW A LIGHT TO THE ENEMY AT NIGHT!!! Ace, for that you're on point tomorrow, you simple-minded sack of shit!"

"He's dead, Sarge," stammered the Kid.

"Fer Chrissake, I know that!" yelled the Sergeant. "I been in this stinkin' war long enough to know a dead body when I see one. Now get down in that slit trench where they can't see ya and light me up this damn cigar."

"But Sarge..." protested the Kid feebly, "You might get shot if you smoke that there cigar. A cigar ain't worth dyin' for..."

"Listen, Kid, and listen good," growled the Sarge. "The Jap ain't been born, and the bullet ain't been made that has my name on it."

The kid crawled into the trench and reached for the cigar with shaking fingers. He lit it. Nothing happened. The kid shook the match out hastily and tossed the cigar to the sergeant, who caught it handily and jammed it in his mouth, sitting down with his back to the sandbagged parapet, just as calm as if he was on the beach at Coney Island.

He took a long draw. That was good. He could almost imagine he was back in Fresno, playing pool and seducing bargirls. Almost.

Three miles away, out in Ironbottom Bay, Lieutenant Sato squinted through the high-powered rangefinder in his position high atop the towering bridge of the battleship Kirishima. "I have a fix on a light, sir," he hissed excitedly. "It looks like a cigarette! Ranging in now..."

The great long-barreled gun turrets on the Kirishima swung around, like the noses of questing bloodhounds, searching out their prey. An octet of huge 14-inch diameter high explosive shells nestled in their steely chambers, waiting like greyhounds for the moment of release. Those shells could go straight through a heavy cruiser ten miles away like it was made of butter, and open it up like a tin can.

"Go ahead, you little bastards," snarled Sergeant Calhoun, taking one more drag at his glowing cigar, and directing a contemptous glance over his shoulder toward the unseen Japanese troops hunkered down in the bushes on the far side of the line. "Show us what ya got, ya little heathen slopeheads. You want a piece of Jack Calhoun? I dare ya. Gimme yer best shot..."

- LH

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Rapparee
Date: 19 Jun 03 - 08:28 PM

It was dark. Stygian blackness unrelieved by star or moon or man-made illumination. As dark as you think that it would be if you had no candle, or lacked the wit to light the one you had.

It came from afar, the sound. A gentle whizzing up into the air and then a glorious burst of actinic light, brighter than the sun, as the flare gently wafted to earth on its parachute, leaving afterimages on the retina where the visual purple had been depleted.

CRACK-thump and the bullet imbedded itself in the sandbags on the far side of the trench.

"Blimey! Missed again. The Hun is a lousy shot," thought Carlyle, his last thought, as the second bullet spattered his brains into the mud and slime of the trench bottom.

"Told the stupid blighter to keep his head down," muttered Fordyke. "Now we'll have to police the trench again. Bloody Sergeant-Major."

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: GUEST,noddy
Date: 19 Jun 03 - 04:50 PM

hey Little Hawk take a look at my post on "ants", realy in my pants.

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Little Hawk
Date: 19 Jun 03 - 01:39 PM

Magnificent effort, Noddy! What I really like is that you are taking us into new, fresh approaches here, new themes in the ever-expanding field of BAAAAAD writing. The possibilities just keep expanding.

- LH

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: GUEST,noddy
Date: 19 Jun 03 - 12:13 PM

Does that mean the hamsters are a breeding pair.
Do you send them in the post.
Do you send them together.
NO NO NO. I dont want to know.

As you might guess it is a bit quite at work... now the students have gone YEAH!

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: GUEST,noddy
Date: 19 Jun 03 - 11:57 AM

Thwack. Thwack. He swung hard and with each blow the axes cut deep into the ice. Gently at first he pulls on them testing if they would hold. Then harder until all his bodyweight, rucksack and all were supported on the axes. Gazing down at his feet he moved first his right kicking the sharpened steel of the crampons into the blue green ice. Now the left same as the right but slightly higher. now it was time to put the weight back on the four front points of the crampons imbeded only half an inch if that.
Thwack thwack
Step step
Thwack thwack.
Step step.
Each time he moved higher and higher, ever upward on the waterfall A blue green pillar of solid stationary water,now frozen in time, frozen in space. His world consists of his movement only .Nothing else matters nothing else should matter .It all comes down to him and his skill as he climbs on. No rope tethers him to a partner . No rope for security. It is him ,his axes and the ice.
Thwack... crash .The ice shattered on contacted .Large sheets the size of dinner plates hurtled ever quickening into the void below. He swung again with measured force. Thwack it bit deep again. The tension
in his mind eased as it bit home. It happens every now and then but each time it is energy spent, time spent. Hanging, waiting, hoping the next swing is true. Yes, this is fun .This is what he wants. That little bit of the expected unexpected. The thrill of the climb. A tiny dot in this frozen world he moves on un-noticed happy in his world.

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Amos
Date: 19 Jun 03 - 08:50 AM

Noddy:

Keep it up and you'll have more hamsters than you know what to do with,,,,

A

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: GUEST,noddy
Date: 19 Jun 03 - 05:26 AM

A solitary dinner sat in the corner gazing at his coffee and then into the cold of the dawn. A thin wisp of misty cloud lay low on the horizon. He lifted his cup and swallowed the remaining dregs threw a few dollars on the table and left. As his car disappeared into the the distance the waitress cleared the table her eyes watching the car and customer. Only another five hours of the shift to go. "Hope business picks up" she thought. Her thoughts and hopes were raised when the flash of the early sun on crome. Another car perhaps it will pull in. It did.
He was tall his lean frame covered by a heavy leather coat bent awkwardly to one side. He lurched inside. Looking around and seeing only the waitress the tense expression on his face eased slightly.
"Coffee. Black." he called as he slumped heavily into a booth with a gasp.
The waitress was at the table pouring a thick black nectar into the cup. As she went to leave he grabbed her hand tightly. He stared into her eyes "Sit down " he commanded. A wave of fear hit her she tried to release her hand from his grip. No luck. He held it "SIT DOWN" he repeated putting a small badly creased photo on the table and pointing with his other hand.
She looked with surprise, no shock at the photo and sat down. The photo was her some twenty years ago. A crumpled envelope came next "Read this" he said "its for you."
She recognised the hand writng from the past and smiled as the grip on her hand relaxed. As she read her tears fell.
"I have carried that with me for twenty years. He gave it to me on his death bed in Vietnam. He saved my life and died as a result. I promised to take it to you but... well things didnt work out for me. I have been on the run from the law. But this is the only thing thats kept me sane. I knew I had to bring it tonight. I hoped you were here.
He gasped again clutching at his side.He opened the dirty coat to reveal a gapping bullet wound and blood soaked clothing. Ive driven through three states to get here, cops on my trail the whole way. There is this as well and he put a tiny gold ring with a simple stone on the table then slumped to one side breathing no more.

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: GUEST,noddy
Date: 19 Jun 03 - 04:28 AM

OUCH!

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: GUEST, heric
Date: 18 Jun 03 - 11:58 AM

I don't just trim his nose hairs -- last week I gave him a teeny tiny mohawk haircut, too.

Now, back to the typewriter

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Little Hawk
Date: 18 Jun 03 - 11:20 AM

Good start, Noddy... Run it into an 8,000-word epic and you will be sure to receive a generous grant from the WSSBW, sufficient to allow you to acquire those two vital tools of every budding writer...a live hamster and a little pair of scissors for clipping off nose hairs.

- LH

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: katlaughing
Date: 18 Jun 03 - 11:06 AM

Why thank yew, LH, trooley!

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: GUEST,noddy
Date: 18 Jun 03 - 09:01 AM

It was a wild night, a dark night darker than the rest. The wind blew sharp and cold. Like a knife it cut through Gil,s cloak of velvet. It chilled him to the bone .Gil pressed on head bowed in reverence to the wind. He must go on, the others depended on him. He was chosen and it was now up to him. What little training he had in the few short days beforehand served no purpose here. He was alone . Or so he thought. All around they were watching his slow steady progress along the valley. They were waiting, waiting and watching, and soon would make their presence known to him and then it would be too late.

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Little Hawk
Date: 17 Jun 03 - 06:18 PM

By the way, Kat, your little opus about the internet-linked lovers reunited after all those past-life encounters was also gut-wrenchingly dreadful. Nice work! There may be a place for you at the WSSBA's new section, the WSSBW (William Shatner School of BAAAAAD Writing).

- LH

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Little Hawk
Date: 17 Jun 03 - 02:13 PM

Nothing, absolutely nothing, can surpass "the indigenous embrace"! My God, it was so utterly awful that it ought to get a Pulitzer Prize. I was away in Ottawa (our nation's capital...and a very nice city too) for the last 4 days, attending various spiritually oriented gatherings and elevating my consciousness. Little did I expect upon returning to be dragged into the very depths of inanity and mundanity, the nadir of tendentious and absolutely terrible fiction. OwQ! The dreadful generic idiocy of it all! The grabbag of bogus Native scenes and supposed language! Never, never, have Apaches been so mangled in modern fiction as in that one short piece of unredeemable crap.

Congratulations, Janet Desmond-Hiller! You have a lucrative career in Romance fiction ahead of you. And Greg...your tale was pretty mind-numbing too. Well done.

- LH

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: katlaughing
Date: 17 Jun 03 - 12:58 PM

Maybe, Greg, but yours is so finely on the razor's edge that I can stomach it...:-)

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: greg stephens
Date: 17 Jun 03 - 11:55 AM

katlaughing: I am flattered you want to hear more of the story, but I have to say that the previous "indigenous embrace" of the Red Indian chief looks more promising for interesting developments.,

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Amos
Date: 17 Jun 03 - 11:49 AM

GLutton for punishment, KL??

:>)

A

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: katlaughing
Date: 17 Jun 03 - 11:20 AM

Greg: Please, sir, I wan' some m-o-r-e?! in my best "Oliver" imitation! **bg**

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Amos
Date: 17 Jun 03 - 10:12 AM

Gee, Greg, a definite contender. I',m glad you stopped when you did!!

A

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: greg stephens
Date: 17 Jun 03 - 08:00 AM

As a representive of the Prudential Insurance Company in Heckmanthorpe for forty-eight years(the last three years as area manager until my enforced retirement at the not unsprightly age of fifty seven years) and as co-founder of the Heckmanthorpe Folk Club which ran from its exciting beginnings in 1963 (the year in which sex was invented as Philip Larkin so amusingly observed in a famous poem) until its sad closure in 1993 due to falling attendance, my life has been not without incident which I feel may of some small interest to the general public, and now as I have time to reflect on the intervening years I must perforce take up my pen and record some of the rich tapestry of Yorkshire life before age inevitably clouds the clear colours and richer sounds of memory.
   But to begin at(or perhaps I should qualify that "at" and say a little more precisely"near") the beginning. A small boy, shorts-clad and grazed of knee, strode down the hill to Grimdike Bottom, swinging his satchel and whistling a gay tune of the day, heard perhaps that very morning on the newly-acquired wirelss which graced the sideboard in our front parlour. The factory chimney at Hackbone Mill belched(or perhaps I should rather say "gently emitted") a plume of black smoke, and the hooter emitted its mornful hoot, breaking the calm of that idyllic morning, the sunlit sky however showing signs of impending rain, or least an overcast day, from the west. I whistled blithely enough in all conscience, unware that at Bog Lane School that day a momentous encounter was to take place that would forever turn my life into pathways as yet unforeseen by the enquiring though perhaps sheltered mind of an eight-year old......

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Amos
Date: 16 Jun 03 - 11:16 PM

I have a theory that insomnia drives people to become psychologists in the hopes of finding out why they can't sleep, and they discover the remedy in graduate studies. It has nothing to do with helping others.

A

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: GUEST,Crazy Little Woman
Date: 16 Jun 03 - 10:52 PM

Would y'all quit preening?

Nothing here is nearly as bad as research papers in psychology or sociology. They should be marketed as insomnia aids.

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Amos
Date: 16 Jun 03 - 09:58 PM

Oh yeah -- I just get so carriewd away by this kind of stuff the old ticker gets put at risk -- right--- actually I think I am more likely to bust a gut laughing!!

A

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Janie
Date: 16 Jun 03 - 04:34 PM

I respectfully withdraw my name from nomination. This old beaurocrat can't even fantasize that luridly, Janet. It's enough to make Janet Daley (Dailey?) blush!!!

Peter T., end this contest and send her the prize money real quick like. I'm afraid if someone tries to top her the 'Cat will be shut down for pure purience:-0!!! (Or Amos will get too excited and have a coronary.)

Janie

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 16 Jun 03 - 03:17 PM

WOW, Janet! I think you've retired the trophy!

Dave Oesterreich

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Amos
Date: 16 Jun 03 - 12:50 PM

My gawd -- I think we've reached a new ebb!! :>) Well done--hmmmm....er, badly done well!

A

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: GUEST,Janet Desmond-Hiller
Date: 14 Jun 03 - 05:42 PM

She awakened in the muggy heat of the darkened teepee, her head throbbing and fuzzy as a ball of cotton. Outside the muggy confines of the wigwam, primitive drums beat out an exotic rhythm. She heard heavy male voices speaking the native tongue of the Apache, loudly, as if in argument. Suddenly, the flap of the tent was torn open and the dark interior flooded with intense light. Instinctively, Rebecca gathered the shredded calico bodice to cover her ample bosom. Before her stood a tall, muscular Indian in full headdress. The hungry eyes in his dusky, handsome face seemed to devour her. "No...please!" She pleaded as he stealthily crept toward her, her heart beating like a thousand triphammers inside her. His hand reached out, slowly, gently taking her golden hair into the fingers. "Oom bato!" He said, a smile slowly disclosing his perfect teeth, which were set off by the darkness of his skin and his raven hair. She saw the large muscles bulging in his forearm like rippling cables beneath the skin. Taking her by her delicate hands, soft and fragrant from the many days she had spent luxuriating at her father's antebellum mansion in Baton Rouge, the dangerously handsome savage clasped her to his brawny chest. A chorus of angels sang to her to yield to his fiery indigenous embrace, while a gang of devils demanded that she fight! Fight like a wildcat!

Then his lips were on hers, his mouth surprisingly tender, and she felt her fears being forged into desire by the white hot fires of her passion. Without a word, he swept her up into his arms, and out through the teepee flap they went. In silence, he mounted his great white steed, covered in warpaint, fringe and feathers, and placed her before him. "Wah tonka!" he cried, and the horse wheeled and sped across the great buffalo plain to the top of a high crest, where the mighty herd lay before them, and far away stretched the great purple line of the Bighorn Range. Taking his beaded hunting knife, he cut a small mark into his arm. Then, taking her by the wrist, he pushed the knife tip into her flesh, nearly causing her to swoon. He pressed his cut against hers and spoke the word, gently, "me ton coota". When he kissed her again, she knew, somehow without understanding his rude language, that they had been married in the Indian fashion. Her hand found his as she whispered "my heart soars like a hawk!"

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Amos
Date: 13 Jun 03 - 11:57 PM

That makes a lot of sense, Janie!! Mebbe too much sense for a "bad writing" thread! Maybe it is just a curve which approaches weirdness asymptotically. Ya think?

This really is spinny stuff! LOL!


A

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Janie
Date: 13 Jun 03 - 11:24 PM

Now Amos, you'll make me blush with all that praise.

It feels weird because it IS weird.

J>

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Amos
Date: 13 Jun 03 - 02:25 PM

Janie:

Wow!! You really have a flair for this stuff!! I especially think your self-pitying inferiority rap is as bad as any I have seen on these threads. You are definitely a Contendah!! :>)

I dunno -- I feel I am losing perspective with this "bad stuff wins" spin on things. I'm feeling kinda torqued and disoriented. It is unnerving! On the other hand, I feel more comfortable writing for bad than I do writing for good. Maybe I was just boirn bad, eh? I dunno. All I can twell ya is it feels really weird.

A

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Janie
Date: 13 Jun 03 - 01:23 PM

Ya know, I really spoke too fast. After going back and rereading the entire thread, I realize just how awful many of the submissions are.

It really kinda makes me mad, ya know? Here I am, a naturally bad writer, thinking I finally have a chance to shine at something, show my true talent, and make a name for myself on Mudcat. I mean, even though I read nearly all of the music threads, I rarely have anything to contribute to the threads (other than "Thanks, I didn't know that!") So I always feel like such a mudcat nobody.Well-that's not entirely true. I did once draw down a couple of very sick and nasty responses from our misogynistic Sincerely, Mr. G. and for a few glowing moments felt like I was really somebody in this community. Alas, the feeling soon faded as I observed thread after thread recede into obscurity after I posted to them. Well anyway, so here comes this thread, which I had avoided reading until now , because the subject is so very near and dear to me. Then I sez to myself, I sez "Aw shucks, Janie. Why not give it a try? This is after all, an area in which you really are quite talented. You might not win, but you have a good shot at placing." So I impulsively jumped in before I carefully analyzed the competition. Having done so, I now see that the really good, creative writers here are also better at being bad than am I. Life is just not fair. *sob*

Janie

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Janie
Date: 13 Jun 03 - 11:06 AM

What I meant to say was "Huh?" However, I do see that would be unacceptably brief. In addition, after rereading my first effort, I can see several areas in which I could do much better at writing badly, even poorly. For the present, let it suffice for me to rewrite the last sentence in the following manner:

"However, as I am sure is apparent to all who read this, my writing is very dry, cumbersome and uneccessarily wordy, even, perhaps, obtuse. Additionally, my ability to spell correctly without a spell-checker has diminished over the course of time, as my age has increased and I have gotten older."

If this is not bad enough to win the contest, please feel free to read nearly any post I have made to any thread. Surely one of them will qualify.

Now, when do I collect my prize?

Janie

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Amos
Date: 12 Jun 03 - 11:24 PM

Janie, you're being succinct. How do you expect to prove yourself as a bad writer if you go around saying in one word what should properly be said in eleven?

A

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Janie
Date: 12 Jun 03 - 11:20 PM

Hah!

Janie

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Amos
Date: 12 Jun 03 - 11:10 PM

The aforementioned participant is acknowledged for her lon dedication to the obscure and genteel art of bad writing, with meritorious honors added in the Division of Bureaucratic Indirection, Subdivision of Polysyllabic Euphemisms. It remains to be seen however whether she is, herself, in contradistinction to the wide array of mechanical circuits aimed at administrative obfuscation, capable of writing badly without the aid of the aforementioned mechanisms. Although she is highly qualified as a Bad Writer within the hallowed ranks of Adminstrata, if she were to cast off those artifices and stand before us in all of her disencumbered glory, speaking as the private individual she has always been deep within, the distinct possibility raises itself for our due consideration that she might, by default and innate nature, find herself writing in a manner which can only be characterized as excellent. This, however, remains to be determined. We can only suggest in light of the positive potential so obviously apparent in the subject participant, that said determination should be scheduled at the earliest possible roundabout opportunity.

Regards,

A

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Janie
Date: 12 Jun 03 - 10:30 PM

All of the above named individuals have been striving with great effort to write badly. However, for a truly bad writer, such as myself, writing badly is completely effortless. I trained in it diligently over the course of 30 years in social work with public agencies, including three years as a policy specialist for a state Department of Welfare in which my primary job was to write state policy manuals based on federal regulations. In addition, I returned to graduate school when I was 40 years old, spending two years learning to write APA style so that I would know how to write a professional paper, perhaps for publication in a social work or public policy journal. Although my final drafts are no longer always perfect, as they were in the days when all of my writing was reviewed in team meetings prior to statewide distribution to field staff, my sentence structure, grammer and punctuation still tend to be quite good in the sense of being correct according to the Harbrace College Handbook that I used in those days. However, as I am sure is apparent to all who read this, my writing is very dry, cumbersome and uneccessarily wordy, and my spelling is not as good as it used to be.

And that's the truth!

Janie

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Amos
Date: 12 Jun 03 - 07:48 PM

Well...I dunno, John...I kinda think of it as well-executed badnessm, if you know what I mean, being windy, somewhat romanticized, and above all, unreal. Sorry if I violated the Standards of the Thread!! :>)

The guitar piece? -- so good that the first time I read it, I roundly thanked the person who had sent it to me. Months and months later I sent it back as a reminder. It is downright good, no mistake. This thread is funny that way, it seems. It doesn't belong here, though!

A

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: John Hardly
Date: 12 Jun 03 - 04:37 PM

now justa doggone minnit.

Amos, that's not bad. That's wordy but accurate, and about the only cliche' is the horses' name. And it's compelling. Am I missing something?

Funny, but that's sorta why I posted the "Guitar" thing above. I had written it some time ago as part of a short story. Then I started reading more about writing (things like "Never use adjectives!....well almost never".). I've started to second guess myself, and I guess I'm not confident that I know good from bad anymore. I knew that, in a sorta good/sorta brutal way, if it was bad the mudcat would let me know -- and what better vehicle to find out than a thread that's supposed to be bad writing.

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Amos
Date: 12 Jun 03 - 04:00 PM

He squinted across the rolling valley floor, the wind and dust attacking his face in a series of gritty, burning bursts. The baleful heat of an early afternoon sun sent wavering illusions of motion into his brain from a vista in which nothing actually moved for mile upon baking, sun-drenched mile. He felt Thunderbolt sigh in protest, but he paid no attention; his eyes were riveted on a lonely stand of cottonwood brush that marked the sole source of water across the endless wasteland below him. He stared thoughtfully, noticing the brushwood bending with the breeze. Except for one detail, all seemed normal; but the brush was bending against the wind. He settled back in his worn saddle and reached for the Winchester rifle that hung from its side. The die had indeed been cast, and he was ready. He urged Thunderbolt into a slow lope down the long sloping flanks of the butte, the rifle ready across his lap, his steely gray eyes alert. He was ready. He would come out of this day alive. If he didn't, it wouldn't matter anymore anyway...

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: John Hardly
Date: 12 Jun 03 - 03:33 PM

I can't figger out a one/two paragraph way to poke fun at it, but...

...don't you hate the "Suspense Novels" that in every way set themselves up as a "whodunit", but then enter new, crucial evidence in the last page that, well, is just sorta cheating the game?