Well now.
We are fast approaching 450 entries between blogger and Myspace (or roughly three times the number I was anticipating), but I am undeterred! I am ready! I am prepared! Mostly!
And despite one half of the stupendously ultimate organizational committee of two getting cold feet and claiming that she had, um, this “thing” tonight (I’m not naming names but it was Anne Dayton), I have successfully bribed Anne back into the fold and tonight we will decide on the finalists. Please show your appreciation to Anne by visiting Good Girl Lit, buying her very wonderful novel THE BOOK OF JANE and sending her bizarre apocalyptic religious paraphernalia. She’ll love it.
Also many thanks go out to the divine Miss Snark for stopping by and mocking my task ahead. Your schadenfreude brought a nostalgic tear to my eye.
Now for the update: this evening Anne and I are going to decide on a slate of finalists (probably 5-10, but that will be determined tonight), and tomorrow’s post will include an electronic voting widget thing so you can decide on the ultimate winner (with one write-in vote available to those who have a blogger account or have posted on this blog with a non-blogger username in the past — no anonymous write-ins!). While the system will not allow unlimited voting, I am going to rely on the good nature of the finalists to follow the honor system and not try and pull any electronic funny stuff — frankly, if there is cheating on a for-fun contest on a semi-frequented blog I might just lose faith in humanity altogether. MY OPTIMISM ABOUT THE WORLD IS HANGING IN THE BALANCE!
But still, I will also be monitoring any irregular activity and the best way to ensure fairness in the voting system is if everyone votes and encourages others on the Internet to do so: one time, fairly, and honestly. Oh, and if everyone also says who they voted for and why in the comments section of tomorrow’s post we will get a clearer picture if someone is getting a suspiciously disproportionate share of the vote.
Please enter the Stupendously Ultimate First Line Challenge if you haven’t already, and don’t forget to check out both Myspace and Blogger for the full list of entries!
Best of luck to everyone. But especially to me and Anne. We’re going to need it.
wow!! Thank you so very much josephine damian,especially for the mention on your blog.
Josephine —
Wow! Thanks for adding me to your finals list. You made my day.
I agree with your choice of Conduit’s line. It gave me a serious case of the willys.
I didn’t see Dramabird’s line about the “gates of the Emerald City,” which made me do triple takes merely for imagery and allusory power. That one made it to the top of my finals list.
BTW — “looks like we’ve got a drunk…” was the opener in one of my screenplays. It’s now the first line of the novelization.
Cheers!
I really like this one. Something just…speaks to me on this one…
>>”The footprints ended abruptly, just as the boy’s parents had said they would.” – anon<<
“That summer, the arsonist struck every home on the block but ours.” — jeanne
This one gets my vote!