Intentionally Bad Writing

On 8/21/08, inspired by the work of Amanda McKittrick Ros, we in the Workshop intentionally wrote the worst scenes and stories we could.

Here they go:

1. Miranda von Salis "A BAD STORY"
   
   Sherri woke up and the smell of Sharpies hitting her nose like a spike. Not one of those tent spikes but the kind from the medieval days that has the barbs on them and the knights or whatever would stab each other with them. And, if you can imagine one of those spikes being stabbed up your nose, or just anywhere really but especially on your face, then you know how Sherri felt. Now add to that the painfully, excruciating pain that is the strong and unforgiving stench of a recently unopened Sharpie opened for the first time then you know exactly how Sherri felt. Exactly. Sherri stood up and felt the warm mush of cold cheese and sauce between her toes. Looking down, she noticed the extra large sausage pizza from the night before. The pizza that she did not remember buying but that she assumed was from yesterday because it wasn’t there when she woke up yesterday at 9:04 (she slept in). And apparently she bought a pizza yesterday too.
   
   Disengaging he toes from the mysteriously placed pizza she began her morning ritual of her ritual preparations for the day. Today was like every other day, other than the pizza, so she got ready in the same way. Because she was getting ready in the same way she did the same things as she did yesterday, minus the pizza. When she was as ready as she was on every other morning that she could remember except for perhaps a few mornings on which she stayed in bed, she left the house. As she stepped in to the hall she had a flashback from her past.
   
   She was little, maybe 5 or 6 but she could have been 7, and she was in charge of watching her baby brother Lucas while their mom went out to the library or something. Lucas was fussing and Sherri calmed him down. This memory did not pertain to her current life or situation in anyway but she remembered it. While she was deep in thought about this memory she was not paying attention to what she was doing. She was so deep in thought about her baby brother Lucas, who hadn’t called her in a while anyway, she began to cross the street without looking both ways(which in general is a bad idea unless you are really, really busy and have somewhere very important to go at a very specific time or if you see a friend on the opposite sidewalk and want to go say hello and catch up). Because of this lack of judgment, Sherri did not see the truck coming. So, for Sherri, today was not like every other day because she died and you only do that once if you are lucky.



2. Alana Mohamed "A Bad Day"
   
   The day before yesterday after last month’s block party before this month was a bad day. Ellie was with her mom and her dad and her little brother and her aunt, who was a really annoying person, and her boyfriend, who was like God, only not. Her aunt was a really annoying person, so she didn’t have children or a husband, she just had herself. Actually, she had a house and a car, but it was a small house and a bad car, so that proved she was a really annoying person.
   
   Anyways, it was a bad day because she, meaning Ellie and not her aunt, or her mom, or even her little bother, who was sometimes mistaken for a girl because he had not yet reached puberty, but her as in Ellie had acquired a mondoginormous, scarlet period-like mark, only bigger than a normal period, on the tip of her nose so she looked like Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer AND it was the block party and block parties are always bad because one of Ellie’s friend or neighbors always received some sort of violent action, like a shanking or a shooting. But mainly it was because of her red dot. Oh, and that and that and her annoying aunt.
   
   Her annoying aunt exclaimed boomingly when she saw it, about how unfortunate-looking she happened to be that day and how it was no different than any other day. Ellie would have liked to shead many a tear because of this distressing, wounding, painful, injurious, malicious, spiteful, vindictive, barbed statement, but her boyfriend was with her, only he was nodding his head in agreement, so she did and then her little brother let out a stentorian laugh and then everyone joined in to create a collective stentorian cackling. Ellie was terribly discomfited.



3. Katie Waldron
   
   "May we gracefully trot through the endless seas?" I questioned my bosom buddy as she gazed into the unmistakenably sky-seemingly spray painted by a graffiti artist with a pearly puffs of cumulus clouds.
   
   "Yes! That is a magnificent plan. Afterwards, shall we linger upon the vast sands of the beach cleverly named Coney Island?"
   
   I briefly pondered her previous statement. What an interesting formation of words. I once again admired the sky. It was beginning to darken like there was a prevailing storm in the midst of our exceedingly perfect day.
   
   "Our day has been foiled!" the babbling broad stated.
   
   "Yes, I do believe our day will be dampened, both literally and figuratively, by incoming precipitation."
   
   So, we laid lazily upon the couch in a daze much like the many warriors lost in the Battle of Gettysburg.



4. Kylah Shenkin
   
   Mitchell sat on the steps of the sanctuary waiting for Anthony's arrival as a cadaverous geriatric waits for their impending passing. He knew there was no stopping it, but he still wanted to flee and hide out from doom. As Mitchell contemplated actually attempting to go on the lam, Anthony made his dreaded appearance. Mitchell and Anthony's gazes met, and between them passed a mutual blend of detest and loathing.



5. Maureen Tant "A."
   
   The brown creamy color of his eyes, like an amber-brown crayon from the number 64 box, hit me as would a train collision, with one heading due East at 80 mph, and the other westbound at 60 knots.
   
   I walked, and it stunned me.
   
   "Do you see the road?" I soundlessly uttered, "It is the unending labyrinth of my dapple-hued soul in the spider-webbing aura of their id."
   
   "Who?" he verbalized intensely.
   
   "The ones who walk down upon it," I replied, thesaurusly, indicating the rare and genuine decisiveness of our epoch, the smoothened pebble of a Jones Beach penguin who diets on cabbage and frail mustard plant.
   
   They doth not take to strangers, and are seldom seen--they take up wing and invert themselves, adopting the subtle visage of a delicate gull--those gulls of the sea. In face of homosapien influence they strap themselves into that full-bodied mask, as so many do.
   
   But it was presently departing time, and the alluring knave thought not of sunset, so he took a wing of his own, just as the penguins of that proverbial Jones Beach in my mind.