The opening line of a story is, well, important, no? My fiction professor in grad school warned us of immediate failure, of garbage-can-digging-squalor, if we started our story with “The alarm clock rang…” Such an opening commits the unoriginal sin of over-exhaustion, of an eternal void of ideas—of literary hell, my friends. Let’s face it, one is hardly in medias res at 6 a.m., under the cozy comforter, dreaming of sugar-plum fairies and whatnot.  So naturally, as a fiction-writer-wannabe, I’m drawn to crazy fiction contests such as the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, whose aim is to capture the worst opening line of a novel.

The 2008 award goes to Garrison Spik (pronounced “speak”), with this frightening opener: “Theirs was a New York love, a checkered taxi ride burning rubber, and like the city their passion was open 24/7, steam rising from their bodies like slick streets exhaling warm, moist, white breath through manhole covers stamped "Forged by DeLaney Bros., Piscataway, N.J."

I love it. My fiction teacher would have kicked me to the curb of a New York City “slick street” had I thought of it. On the other hand, I would have won a contest, would have made a name for myself.

The runner up, Andrew Bowers, had a pretty awful one too: "Hmm . . ." thought Abigail as she gazed languidly from the veranda past the bright white patio to the cerulean sea beyond, where dolphins played and seagulls sang, where splashing surf sounded like the tintinnabulation of a thousand tiny bells, where great gray whales bellowed and the sunlight sparkled off the myriad of sequins on the flyfish's bow ties, "time to get my meds checked."

It’s encouraging to know that should my writing career NEVER EVER EVER get off the ground, I could always submit all of my first lines to this contest and, perhaps, receive some recognition in the literary world, after all. ☺