Annual bad writing contest resurfaces after 29-year hiatus

Dale Abraham, half of the Rhythm Sweet & Hot duo on WESA-FM, reminded me that The Pittsburgh Press used to hold a Bad Writing Contest every year.

Such a thing would be redundant in 2020. It may be unofficial, but Twitter and Facebook have been holding such contests almost every day since they launched.

Mr. Abraham’s email nonetheless made me nostalgic for a contest I hadn’t considered in decades. He didn’t win the 1989 affair that attracted 549 entrants, but one of his Grouchoesque lines got a mention in the Press Sunday magazine story announcing the winners: “Ralph knew his shortcomings outnumbered his long suits, which didn’t fit either.”

That alone made we want to get on this, like a fat bird too lazy to fly to a higher ledge.

Such are the metaphors that the Press contest annually inspired. It was an officially sanctioned spinoff of the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest (“Where ‘www’ means ‘wretched writers welcomed’” ). That ongoing venture, sponsored by the English Department at San Jose State University, is itself inspired by the minor Victorian novelist, Edward Bulwer-Lytton,’ who began a novel with “It was a dark and stormy night’’ long before Snoopy ever thought of it.

The Press version lasted eight years. We generally asked readers to complete an already bad story by adding up to 500 words even worse. The last contest was in 1991 because the Press essentially took its own life the following year. Going back through the archives 30 or more years, I found that some of the bad writing was also badly dated:

“As welcome as a Yugo in a yuppie’s carport” (John R. Popp, Whitehall); “Dolores’ love for him slipped away like investor confidence in the savings and loan industry” (Bill Keane, Natrona Heights); And “Yesterday he asked her to go the movies to see ‘Rain Man.’ ‘Why should I want to see a movie about [WTAE meteorologist] Joe DeNardo?’” she replied. (Jinny Welker, Penn Hills)

Other offerings are timeless. In 1989, a convict at Western Pen postscripted, “Having a wonderful time, wish you were here.” Michael F. Dufalla of Monongahela wrote, “She had trouble written all over her face — and a body that made me curious to see if her penmanship extended any lower.’’ And “Mark was a plague on womanhood, with no vaccine in sight.” (Linda T. Phillips, Oakmont)

Christine Kindl, now the vice president for communications and marketing at California University of Pennsylvania, was a freelance writer in 1989. She entered the contest because “I thought it was a great challenge to take all the bad habits I tried to strip out of my everyday work and pile them up in a way that might be amusing for readers.’’

It worked. When readers were asked to begin the world’s worst hypothetical novel, Ms. Kindl got an honorable mention for a 500word piece that began: “When he branded the logo of the volunteer fire department into the puffy, marshmallow-white flesh of his forearm, Dwayne’s buddies down at the fire hall knew some smoky, glowing ember of emotion was smoldering like a Centralia coal mine beneath his calm exterior . ... ”

If you want your bad writing to be good, or vice versa, Ms. Kindl said, the key is setting a semi-believable scene with “all the awful conventions one associates with really bad writing, the similes that don’t quite work, the image that makes a reader cringe.”

Jason Togyer, founder of the Tube City Almanac, was a high school freshman at Serra Catholic in McKeesport when he submitted an essay that included this slimy simile in 1989: “The rain was spewing from the sky like vomit from a platypus.’’

The Press magazine editor who chose that line, Jim Davidson, wound up being Mr. Togyer’s journalism professor at Carnegie Mellon University a handful of years later. In another city, that might be an amazing coincidence. In Pittsburgh, the small town that plays a big city on TV, it’s surprising they didn’t meet sooner.

Mr. Davidson, now a semi-retired Presbyterian minister living in Squirrel Hill, said the annual story on the bad writing contest never had a byline because “nobody really wanted to take credit for it.’’

I’m wary of resurrecting the contest; in this age of texting and tweeting, 500 words is practically a novella. Yet I’m fully confident Pittsburgh can write badly with bravado again. That’s my 2020 vision. (See, I’ve already started.) So completely without authorization, I’m launching the ninth annual bad writing contest after a 29-year hiatus.

The winner of this year’s Bulwer-Lytton prize in the crime/detective category, Jeremy Das, of Loughborough, England, wrote this: Realising that his symptoms indicated a virtually undetectable, fastacting neurotoxin, CIA coroner Quinn Abner frantically wrote up the details, lay on the floor and, as a professional courtesy, did his best to draw a chalk outline of himself.

You can either continue his story or start your own, but I’ll need something delightfully atrocious — and under 250 words — by Jan. 31. Email boneill@post-gazette.com or mail your entry to Brian O’Neill; Post-Gazette, 358 North Shore Drive, Suite 300, Pittsburgh, Pa. 15212.

There’s no cash prize, but I can promise regional adulation and a PG coffee mug, or at least one of those two.