Posted 1:12 PM by Blah blah

Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest (Bad Writing)

One reason I'm proud of living in San Jose...

Alabama Woman Wins Worst Writing Award:

SAN JOSE, Calif. - A lizard lover from Alabama won an annual contest celebrating bad writing with a ghastly simile comparing doomed romance to processed cheese.

Mariann Simms of Wetumpka, Ala., won $250 in the 22nd Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, a parody honoring the writer of the worst beginning to an imaginary novel.

"They had but one last remaining night together, so they embraced each other as tightly as that two-flavor entwined string cheese that is orange and yellowish-white, the orange probably being a bland Cheddar and the white ... Mozzarella, although it could possibly be Provolone or just plain American, as it really doesn't taste distinctly dissimilar from the orange, yet they would have you believe it does by coloring it differently," Simms wrote.

The contest, sponsored by San Jose State University, is named after the oft-mocked British novelist Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, whose 1830 novel Paul Clifford began, "It was a dark and stormy night."...

Albert T. Keyack of Ambler, Penn., described similarities between lips and garnishes of Shirley Temple cocktails.

"Bill shifted uncomfortably on his stool looking at the topless blonde bombshell on the bar, but the first thing that struck him was the pulchritude of the exotic dancer's lips, which glowed like maraschino cherries, that is, pitted cherries macerated in an almond-flavored syrup then heated to boiling in an alum-containing brine full of carcinogenic red dyes," Keyack wrote.

The winner of the "Dark and Stormy Night" category referred to a high-protein snack.

"It was almost a dark and stormy night — not dark or stormy enough to be called that but just the kind of sweaty night that makes your shirt stick to your back and make you wish you were still at home with the air conditioning and eating pig skins and watching the Martha Stewart trial on TV.," wrote Sarah Harris of White Rock, N.M.