World’s Worst Writing Revealed

A writer from Washington has won the honor of having the world’s worst writing.

The guy, named Garrison Spik, came in first in the annual San Jose State University Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest for bad writing. His entry began with the following passage:

“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.’”

Some other award-winning entries from the competition:

“‘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.’”

“Mike Hummer had been a private detective so long he could remember Preparation A, his hair reminded everyone of a rat who’d bitten into an electrical cord, but he could still run faster than greased owl snot when he was on a bad guy’s trail, and they said his friskings were a lot like getting a vasectomy at Sears.”

“The hardened detective glanced at his rookie partner and mused that who ever had coined the term ‘white as a sheet’ had never envisioned a bed accessorized with a set of Hazelnut, 500-count Egyptian cotton linens from Ralph Lauren complimented by matching shams and a duvet cover nor the dismembered body of its current occupant.”

The school’s English department has sponsored the event, named after novelist Edward George Earl Bulwer-Lytton, since 1982. You can read many more “dishonorable mentions” at the official contest web site — the same site at which you can nominate us next year.