{"id":3042,"date":"2005-08-04T21:55:03","date_gmt":"2005-08-05T02:55:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/gazette\/2005\/08\/04\/it-was-a-stark-and-wormy-blight\/"},"modified":"2025-07-25T18:31:14","modified_gmt":"2025-07-25T23:31:14","slug":"it-was-a-stark-and-wormy-blight","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/2005\/08\/04\/it-was-a-stark-and-wormy-blight\/","title":{"rendered":"It was a stark and wormy blight&#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>I always look forward to reading the results of the annual <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bulwer-lytton.com\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest<\/a>, even though I eventually come away depressed that I couldn&#8217;t write that badly if I tried, although, now that I think about it, perhaps my problem is that I&#8217;m <em>trying<\/em> to write badly, and that &#8212; while in and of itself is certainly nothing to be ashamed about; just look at what Hunter S. Thompson accomplished, although, of course, he&#8217;s dead and that pretty much leaves us at an impasse on that trail &#8212; is stifling, as it were, my <em>natural<\/em> bad-writing ability and causing it to be subsumed, submerged, subterraneanized&#8230;in short, buried, like a bad cask of limberger cheese left in the trunk of a &#8217;47 Hudson on a hot and steamy summer New Jersey day (assuming, of course, they were making Hudsons in 1947), and so, sadly, all I can do is look on and shake my head in envy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><span class=\"smaller\"><em>Technorati tag: Bulwark Litmus Test<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Bad writing done right.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":15418,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[75],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3042","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-books-writing","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-content\/uploads\/2005\/08\/header_darkandstormy.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3042","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3042"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3042\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15421,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3042\/revisions\/15421"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15418"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3042"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3042"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3042"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}