Seattle mom honored as a really bad writer

Without the gerbil, she'd be nothing.

Well, not nothing exactly. But Molly Ringle would likely not have won the 2010 Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest — the foremost national contest dedicated to bad writing. And not just any old bad writing. The contest requires a single sentence, so bad it's ... well, really, really bad.

Her winning entry, written in her West Seattle home:

For the first month of Ricardo and Felicity's affair, they greeted one another at every stolen rendezvous with a kiss — a lengthy, ravenous kiss, Ricardo lapping and sucking at Felicity's mouth as if she were a giant cage-mounted water bottle and he were the world's thirstiest gerbil.

See? The gerbil is the key.

"Some liked her outlandishly inappropriate comparison," said contest judge San Jose State University professor Scott Rice. "It is a sendup of writers who try too hard to be original, and it is a sendup of those revolting couples whose public displays of affection make them poster children for celibacy."

"The wonderfully poor choice of metaphor is what makes the sentence especially funny," said another judge, Sharon Brown.

Ringle learned of her success Saturday. She celebrated with a feast.

"I probably continued making macaroni and cheese or something," she recalled.

Droll, yes. Thrilled, too.

A 34-year-old mother of two, she owes the idea to her infant son, whom she was nursing when she came up with it.

"Something about his attitude and posture ... It reminded me of those guinea pigs we used to have as kids," she recalled.

But dash something off she would not. She pondered and she mused and she reached for the stars, until, by the end of the day, she had pounded out something so perfectly bad, it was gold.

Well, not gold, exactly.

"The contest rules say I get a pittance," she explained. "I'm not sure yet what that is.

"I'm not expecting much but the glory."

The contest, founded by Rice in 1982, is named for the 19th-century writer Edward George Earl Bulwer-Lytton, who penned the notorious line: "It was a dark and stormy night."

Ringle is no novice writer. She is the author of a published novel in the hot-selling "paranormal romance" category.

"The Ghost Downstairs," however, has not sold quite as briskly as "True Blood." She has two more novels that are set to be published, as well, one a romance, the other young-adult fiction.

Which can't help but lead to a question: Is winning a bad-writing contest the best move for an aspiring author?

Ringle sighed.

"I've asked myself, probably belatedly, is that what I want to be famous for?" she said. "But hopefully people in the publishing world know it's all in the name of comedy."

Besides, she said, "You kind of have to have a certain amount of skill to write a sentence so bad it would win. You have to work at it."

Maureen O'Hagan: 206-464-2562 or mohagan@seattletimes.com