quadrivial, tall and grayingDisappointed to hear that there will be no more Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contests. I think I was just about ready to submit my entry, which would have been as memorable as that time when Janet was getting ready to go to her friend Pat's tenth birthday party and lost her skateboard under a passing M34 bus heading west along, of course, 34th Street; as she watched the skateboard crushed beneath the wheels of the behemoth it gave her pause to consider her own mortality, allowing her to idly reminisce on how she lost last year's Spelling Bee on exactly that word, how could she have missed that last "y", that was such an easy word to spell, a gift, really, like the skateboard that she'd been planning to give Pat but wound up getting crushed, like dreams, under the wheels of a passing, oblivious, westbound M34 bus.
lxskllrYa know what's embarrassing? I used this literal sentence starting a story when I was in grade school...
"It was a dark and stormy night"
The poster child of bad writing, and I somehow came up with it all by myself. I don't know where I would've gotten it otherwise. Every once in awhile it pops to mind, and I cringe. At least I can blame it on youth.
@lxskllr I first heard it in the Peanuts comics I read religiously as a kid. Had no idea until much later that it was Bulwer-Lytton.
Huh... I have no memory of that, but I was definitely a big fan of the newspaper comics. Maybe that's where I got it from.
Mycotropic"It was a dark and stormy night, suddenly a shot rang out, the maid screamed!"
Thanks for reinserting that into my conscious thoughts!