The results from the annual Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest are in, and writer David McKenzie of Federal Way, Washington has won. He submitted this gem:

“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.”

Ouch.

Of course, there’s no hint of irony in my identification of McKenzie as a writer. I sincerely believe that in order to compose something that treads so heavily on literary conventions, he must, in his real life, be a competent writer. You can’t intelligently break rules unless you know what they are.

I have to confess that I have moments of feeling sorry for Bulwer-Lytton, a writer whose name is inextricably linked to purple prose. On the other hand, he has something that few other melodramatists achieve: lasting fame. Thanks to Snoopy and the annual Contest, it will always be “a dark and stormy night” in Bulwer-Lytton’s world.

You may read other entries to the 2009 Contest at www.Bulwer-Lytton.com/2009.htm . If you find yourself inspired by these entries, be sure to enter the 2010 contest at www.Bulwer-Lytton.com.

Have you noticed that there are people who apparently live to discourage writers and artists from doing the work they love? “It’s not practical,” they say, nodding sagaciously (as if they, the cubicle-bound, know anything about it). “You can’t make a living at it,” your parents warn, while your friends make oblique references to Poe, Fitzgerald, and the general hazards of intemperance.

In the preface to On Becoming a Novelist, John Gardner says “Almost no one mentions that for a certain kind of person, nothing is more joyful or satisfying than the life of a novelist, if not for its financial rewards then for others; that one need not turn into a misantrope or a drunk; that in fact one can be a more less successful M.D., engineer, or forest, even follow the unfashionable profession of housewife, and also be a novelist–at any rate, many novelists, both great and ordinary, have done it…The worst that can happen to the writer who tries and fails–unless he has inflated or mystical notions of what it is to be a novelist–is that he will discover that, for him, writing is not the best place to seek joy and satisfaction.”

Ignore the naysayers and press forward. There’s no other way to become a writer!

The standard advice that’s handed out to beginning writers is to “write what you know.” I’ve known writers who take that quite literally and ground their fiction in the little events of everyday. Regional writers such as Willa Cather, William Faulkner, or Sarah Orne Jewett built entire careers on writing what they obviously knew well.

Writers like J.R.R. Tolkein or Terry Pratchett follow the dicta as well. Although they write about worlds that exist only in their imagination, they intimately know their worlds and they populate their writings with characters, places, and settings that have the logical consistency of truth.

As I work with my current fiction project, part of the writing process is to go deeply into my character’s life. I am meeting her friends, visiting her home, and reading the books that she reads. The fact that she’s completely imaginary doesn’t matter in the least– I know her, and I know her world.

“Write what you know” is good advice as long as you realize that you can come to “know” almost anything  through the power of imagination. Create a logically consistent world and characters that ring true, and it won’t matter whether you’ve set your story in New England or in Discworld. You’ll be telling the truth about what you know, and that’s what matters.