The Trash-Talking Tournament

Posted by Lisa Marnell


There's a buzz at my tennis club in Westlake Village, California. Enough play-by-the-rules games, where players win a game, a set, a match. It gives all of us too much of a predictable, been there, done that feeling. It time for a change. A breath of fresh air. There's a buzz because we might have a trash-talking tournament.

Huh?


Nothing's definite yet, but it seems it would go something like this: players need to keep the ball in play for at least a couple trips over the net, but the idea is that a good trash-talking player will think of something appropriately rude, distracting to the other player, insulting, such that said player would mess up and lose the point. Sounds like fun, doesn't it?



So, it got me thinking. Wouldn't it be great, great fun to take part in a Wimpy-Writing contest? Just think, when a person enters a traditional writing contest the competition is fierce, preparing one's work is very labor intensive. In a Woosy Writing contest (the name hasn't been finalized yet) there could be many categories for judging: Too many Adjectives, Too many Adverbs, Sorry Dialogue, Flat Narrative, the list goes on. If you're too good at dialogue to win a prize, maybe you can't paint a scene to save your life. See! There's hope for all of us.


I know this idea may never catch on. It could die right here on this page in my sad blog entry. But how fun it would be to win a writing contest. I can barely imagine!