Texas Pages

From Texas Non-Fiction Writers:

Three Texas writers are winners, which is to say losers, in the Texas Non-Fiction Bad Writing Contest 2008. Sponsored by Texas Non-Fiction Writers, an interactive online community otherwise dedicated to encouraging interest and excellence in Texas non-fiction, the contest produced a spate of truly awful prose.

"I was surprised by the amount of garbage that we received," said chief contest judge Jefferson Morgenthaler. "It was pure, unadulterated dreck. We had to choose from some magnificently bad entries."

Third place went to Kathleen Muldoon, of San Antonio, Texas. Her entry was:

The etymological pundits having labeled the linguistic articulation of those of western
persuasion as Bubbalese or, correspondingly, as Bubbaspeak, should be construed as
condescending, patronizing, and pretentious and is, as the risk of uttering a cliché or
banality, in a nutshell, contentious, y'all.

"I'll admit it's bad," said Morgenthaler, who heads Texas Non-Fiction Writers, "but it's not the worst, because it's a bit slapstick, and the 'y'all' at the conclusion tends to weaken it. Both of which strengthen it, if you think about it. It's a very confusing situation."

Second place in the bad writing contest was nabbed by Derek Catsam, of Odessa, Texas. His entry:

"But I love you Bessie Sue!" Billy Joe pleaded with his girl of five weeks, whose eyes
sparkled like diamonds and whose smile lit up a room, just as they did when he first saw
her at the Cutthroat Saloon what seemed like just yesterday. Bessie Sue was as cold as
ice. "I reckon you loved me once. Now you just think you do." It was that sort of straightto-
the-point wisdom that made Billy Joe love her more than ever in that moment. And it
was that wisdom, those eyes, those lips that he knew forced his hand for his next move.
Quick as a cat Billy Joe grabbed his shotgun. Bessie Sue squealed. "Love gone wrong,"
Billy Joe ruefully muttered to himself, stepping onto the running board of his pickup truck,
the smoke from the gun still swirling in the air.

"Clichés and tawdry romance--that's a strong start," said Morgenthaler. "The shotgun
conclusion is a deft touch, but perhaps overpowered by Bessie Sue's lips forcing Billy Joe's hand. This was a contender for first place, but I'd like to see writing turn sour in fewer words."

The first-place prize for bad writing was awarded to Lydia Ondrusek of Richardson, Texas. Her submission was:

In the end, she ended it with all the finality she could muster, finally shoving his ring into
an envelope, unprotected and unloved, writing "THE END" and "FINI" across the back
and sealing it not with a kiss as she had so many, many times before but with the tail
end of the tape from the dispenser she kept on her desk and had forgotten to buy more
for, and then shoving the final mess into the mailbox, which clunked one last final time.
Clunk. That was a sound that meant the end.

"Subtle, subtle, subtle," said Morgenthaler. "This is a masterpiece of endless finality that leaves you wondering whether the author is kidding you or not. True, I've seen worse writing in truckstop paperbacks, but the authors were professional terrible writers, and they're banned from our contest. I stand in awe of this gruesome entry."

Each of the three prize winners receives a Certificate of Demerit and a iPod Shuffle. None of the three have indicated that they intend to leave town or change their names. Notably, the firstand second-place entries seem to be in a fictional vein, even though the contest is sponsored by Texas Non-Fiction Writers. "Bad fiction is easy," said Morgenthaler. "Everyone is doing it. Next year, we may be tougher about insisting on wretched non-fiction."