It's not easy to not write good

"Folks say that if you listen real close at the height of the full moon, when the wind is blowin' off Nantucket Sound from the nor' east and the dogs are howlin' for no earthly reason, you can hear the awful screams of the crew of the "Ellie May," a sturdy whaler captained by John McTavish; for it was on just such a night when the rum was flowin' and, Davey Jones be damned, big John brought his men on deck for the first of several screaming contests."

-- the winning entry by author David McKenzie, of Federal Way, Washington, in this year's Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, where multitudes annually submit wretched opening paragraphs to imaginary works of fiction. Edward George Earl Bulwer-Lytton is memorialized in this contest for apparently being the first to open a story with the timeless "It was a dark and stormy night.."