Do you like writing stupid stuff in speech bubbles?
Do you like coming up with captions for pictures?
Do you have nothing better to do whilst chewing your lunch?
Then the Tethered Cow has a competition for you! Here is my entry:
Tag: competition
So I’m travelling through this first fortnight of NaNoWriMo at a less than stellar pace. I’ve technically had most days free to write as much as I please. I’d imagined this would result in 10,000 word days and that I’d have that pesky 50,000 word total done before I go back to drudgery next week (or the day job, which ever term you prefer).
The reality has been much too horrid for me to bear. All of those professional authors who talked about how hard it was to hit writing targets were right. I guess that is why they are the professionals and I’m still the amateur, they must use better whips on the room full of monkeys.
Of course I have still been achieving the required writing goals, but the problem with having a day job is that it will suddenly rear its ugly head and swing me around in its mighty jaws as it seeks to devour me whole. Being on schedule might be a bad thing at this point. Maybe I should think more like a blogger or self-publishing slime-ball and just write rubbish: who actually needs the chapters to fit together?
Either way I’m enjoying writing every day, and I am actually achieving my primary goal of sitting around having fun. My secondary goal was to get into the habit of daily writing and getting sizable chunks written. That is my achilles heel as a writer, not finishing the larger projects. My writing itself is actually quite good – IMHO – and I’m continually working on aspects that need polish. As Stephen Leather said, writers do need to focus on becoming better writers.
Words Written: 1,698 (per day)
Total: 16,985
Remaining: 33,015
How has everyone else fared so far?
The winners of the Red Adept Reviews Infamous Last Line competition have been announced. I won.
Okay, so I didn’t actually win, but I did place equal third in the Horror category and equal second in the Romance category. You only have to read some of the hilarious Infamous Last Lines to see that the competition was full of great entries.
I loved the idea of the competition: think of the worst possible final line for a novel. Creativity abounded, I myself entered in three categories – I didn’t place in the Mystery section, most likely my entry was too much like a real mystery ending.
Congratulations to the winners of each category and the overall winner Nicholas Chase. Also a big thankyou to the Red Adept team for the competition.
Horror/Thriller/Suspense Entries
Third Place (Ties):
Heroic Manly’s eyes buldged in horror as he, at last, found the courage to look into the mirror where, staring back at him, was a personage who was, at best, merely a two-dimensional character.
— Scott Nagele
Dick and Jane had finally defeated the amorphous, pus-oozing monster, Gilgamesh, thanks to their valiant licking, but would Gilgamesh stay dead, and for how long?
— Tyson Adams
As they slithered across the landscape, their massive tails obliterating everything in their path, they thought little of the destruction of mankind; they hadn’t tasted that good anyway.
— Sandy from Indy
To be continued….
—Scarlet
And then realisation finally dawned upon them, like the brilliant magenta sun striking crimson red into the sky, that the case of the lost armadillo had finally been solved and that they could return home as the heroes of their childhood.
— Annmarie, the awesome one
Holy shit, zombies really DO like to eat brains, and I now deeply regret asking my grandmother to go back inside that church to fetch my high school letterman’s jacket.
— Mister Teacher
As the fierce light of the nearby nuclear blast that destroyed the covert Chechen missile base faded, Lance ‘Danger’ Steele grinned, deftly applied 138 stitches to his bulging right bicep, and held up his victory cigar so that the fiery atomic glow from outside the corpse-strewn bunker lit the end.
— Frank
Romance/Chick Lit Entries
Second Place (Ties):
“This has all been fun, Steph,” he said, letting go of her hand, “But… well… I already have a girlfriend.”
— Gregory J. Downs… google it.
Henry grabbed Rose by her shapely and firm buttocks and pulled her close, whispering in her ear, “This was a great weekend baby, hope you don’t get clingy about it.”
— Tyson Adams
He stood panting in the doorway as he looked back at her, tears rushing down her cheeks like frantic spawning salmon because she’d finally awakened from her vampire-obsessed fantasies to realize that those canine teeth meant something terrifying—he wasn’t a hunky werewolf; he was an insipid spaniel.
—Mary Pat, author of THE TERMINAL DINER
Tyson Adams 