A sentence in which tiny birds and the English language are both slaughtered has taken top honours in an annual bad writing contest.
Sue Fondrie of Oshkosh, Wisconsin, won the 2011 Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest for her sentence comparing forgotten memories to dead sparrows yesterday, said San Jose State University Prof. Scott Rice. The contestant asks writers to submit the worst possible opening sentences to imaginary novels. Fondrie wrote: “Cheryl’s mind turned like the vanes of a wind-powered turbine, chopping her sparrow-like thoughts into bloody pieces that fell onto a growing pile of forgotten memories.”
The University of Wisconsin professor’s 26-word sentence is the shortest grand prize winner in the contest’s 29-year history, Rice said. Contest judges liked that Fondrie’s entry reminded them of the 1960s hit song The Windmills of Your Mind, which Rice described as an image that “made no more sense then than it does now.” The contest is named after British author Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, whose 1830 novel Paul Clifford begins with the oft-quoted opening line “It was a dark and stormy night.” —AP