Someone once asked me what I do as a creative outlet.

I dodged the question, despite knowing exactly what he was getting at and knowing what the correct answer was. I dodged because my primary creative outlet, since I was old enough to have a desk of my own, is writing fiction.* Bad fiction. Horrendous fiction. Fiction that makes me blush even now just to think about, fiction that made me want to crawl into a hole and hide when I found out some of it had been discovered.

I dodged the question because I didn’t want to go dredging through the muck and provide presentable evidence of this creative outlet, in case the asker wanted to know more. In the years that followed, I managed to write fiction that, while still bad, might be considered presentable in the right context. I presented it in the right context, and it was received well. (This hasn’t encouraged me to open it to a wider audience, however, so don’t ask.)

Nothing I write is succinct enough to cut the mustard in this context, but I encourage y’all to check out the winners of the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest. The task is to submit bad opening sentences to imaginary novels. The spectacularly earned grand prize went to this entry:

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.
Jim Guigli
Carmichael, CA

The runner up made me laugh so hard I was glad no one else in my office had shown up yet:

“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?”
Stuart Vasepuru
Edinburgh, Scotland

* I was not a knitter when this question was asked. If asked today, I would still not mention knitting, both because I don’t chat about it with strangers and because I don’t apply that much creativity to it. I could, but I don’t.

Related posts:

1. Collaborative fiction This is pretty cool. It's very similar to an idea...
2. Samhain From Neil's New York Times piece this morning: Fear is...
3. An opaque process I learn by watching. I picked up Perl by reading...
4. Like gold It's been a good few months for science, especially mine....

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.