11 July 2006

That’s one loquacious burrito

The “winners” of the Bulwer-Lytton Literary Prize were announced today.

Here’s the winner, by Jim Guigli of California.

Detective Bart Lasiter was in his office studying the light from his one small window falling on his super burrito when the door swung open to reveal a woman whose body said you've had your last burrito for a while, whose face said angels did exist, and whose eyes said she could make you dig your own grave and lick the shovel clean.

The runner up, Stuart Vasepuru from Scotland, paid homage to Dirty Harry with the following, which warms my cold editor’s heart ;-)

"I know what you're thinking, punk," hissed Wordy Harry to his new editor, "you're thinking, 'Did he use six superfluous adjectives or only five?' -- and to tell the truth, I forgot myself in all this excitement; but being as this is English, the most powerful language in the world, whose subtle nuances will blow your head clean off, you've got to ask yourself one question: 'Do I feel loquacious?' -- well do you, punk?"

Someone remind me to enter this thing next year. Surely between exposure to my editing work and teaching I’ll be able to pick up this ”skill” through osmosis?

BTW, there's a great blog article about the contest, including some published very, very bad writing samples here.

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