It's Not Real

Inspirational song: Dreamer (Supertramp)

I did a very brave thing while I was on Christmas holiday. Well, it's brave for a needy girl like me with low self-esteem. Several weeks ago, I wrote a couple short stories that thrilled me. One was quite dark and violent, in just four short paragraphs, and the other someone bittersweet in just over twice as much space. For the first time in my life, I submitted these things I have created up for review and judgement by an neutral outsider. I sent both stories in to a literary magazine, in the hopes that they would deem my fiction worthy of publication. It will be a while before I know what they think. Weeks? Months? I don't know. I will let you know when I do.

A friend of the family drew my attention to the 2014 winners of the Bulwer-Lytton fiction contest today. This is the award given to writers of the most wretched, horrible, or awkward opening line to an imaginary novel, based upon the opening to the 1830 novel Paul Clifford, by Edward Bulwer-Lytton. He used what was already a tired phrase by then, "It was a dark and stormy night," and that was sadly the best part of his first sentence. There is a grand prize winner for the year, whose sentence was wonderfully twisted. But I have to admit, most of my favorites were in the "dishonorable mentions" under the category winners, particularly those for purple prose. I might have seen myself in a few of those entries, and it amused and frightened me at the same time. After tonight, I think I have a new goal for 2015. I need to enter this contest. If I could condense an entire horror movie down to four paragraphs, I can set up an audaciously bad novel in one sentence. I am allowed to enter as many times as I like. I'm going to try my hand and whip up six or seven truly awful lines. I can't publish them here unless or until they accept them there, so check back in a year and I'll announce how I did.

I just got around to watching the Dr Who Christmas special from last week, all about dreams within dreams. Is that what my writing is? Dreaming about telling stories that aren't true, and then telling you about my dreams, hoping they'll come true by telling you? I think I might have the inspiration for my first Bulwer-Lytton entry. It's just tortured enough to work.