Northern Attack's 2007 Writing Contest - Week 8

There were 24 entries for last week's challenge, so that was pretty cool. Reading all the awesome entries over the course of the entry period, I thought it would be really tough to pick 3 favorites when it came time to vote. While it was tough to pick 3 favorites, it wasn't as difficult as I thought it would be.

A day or two after I submitted my entry for the Jim & Pam / Dwight & Angela double date challenge I had an idea that I really liked: Beet pizza. It seemed obvious enough that surely most people had thought of it before, and it would probably be used for that challenge, but it wasn't. So going into the 8th and final challenge, I was determined to incorporate beet pizza into my entry, no matter what the challenge prompt might be. It didn't have to be in any big way or anything, just enough to use the words 'beet' and 'pizza' consecutively. To a lesser extent I also wanted to incorporate a casual Friday into my entry, including Dwight wearing a Happy Smile Patrol t-shirt. So, what was the 8th and final challenge? This:

"Pick a character and describe their childhood."

So the casual Friday / Happy Smile Patrol t-shirt idea was out, although hopefully I'll be able to use it if there's another contest next year (which would be awesome), and beet pizza would certainly be difficult. But not impossible. Here's my entry for the final challenge:

Writing Assignment #8: The Wonder Years

Angela Martin didn't have many friends growing up. Instead, she spent her free time with her cats. Concerned about this, Angela's dad Freeman decided to take action. He used to know a guy that taught lessons to misbehaving children, but J. Walter Weatherman moved to California awhile back. A friend referred Freeman to a man who recently moved to Scranton. The man, a musician, agreed to take Angela's favorite cat Daisy for two weeks, to break Angela's attachment.

Two weeks later the man went to return Daisy. Besides Daisy, he also carried on his bicycle three pizzas topped with mounds of beets that an area farmer hired him to make for his grandson, who will have to eat the pizzas in one sitting as punishment for eating the 'money beets' from their beet stand. The man rang the doorbell, but there wasn't an immediate answer. He set the pizzas down and walked around the house. Hoping a neighbor found Daisy, Angela opened the door, but instead saw the pizza boxes. There was a post-it note on top, which simply said, "Daisy." Angela was confused until she opened one of the boxes, saw some strange crimson matter, and shrieked in horror. Just then the man walked around the corner carrying Daisy to give back to her.

While her terror lasted only a moment, the damage was done. Since that day Angela hasn't eaten meat, nor has she figured out why Dunder Mifflin's quality assurance representative has always looked strangely familiar.

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I think I did more revision to this entry than any of the others in the contest. Originally the first part of the story involved Angela sneaking a cat into church and it escaping and her getting in trouble for that with her parents, them talking to the pastor for help, him going to Poor Richard's for a drink, Creed playing there, and at the end of the set saying that he also played children's parties. Also, originally her parents gave her cat to another family and she didn't know, and so when she thought Daisy had been made into a pizza, she never found out it wasn't Daisy, and she buried the pizzas in her back yard. I thought that was too dark, though, so I reduced the time frames on everything, especially the amount of time she thought the cat was dead. I also tried briefly to make the entry into 2 talking heads, 1 long one by Angela explaining why she was a vegetarian, and 1 short one at the end by Creed, saying something simple like, "Back in the '80s I did a lot of odd jobs for extra money." But there was no way for Angela to know everything for the story to make sense. The other major challenge getting it down to 250 words. I had a little trouble with the double date entry, but I was able to cut some unnecessary stuff pretty easily. This one was 280 without anything obvious to cut. I remember I got really frustrated that I wouldn't be able to get it to 250 without cutting something essential, and I briefly considered trying another idea, but I took a break and when I looked at it again, I was able to trim 20 non-essential words pretty quickly, and the other 10 or so didn't take too long to get rid of, either.

Despite all the words I've used to talk about writing my entry, I haven't mentioned one simple fact: Compared to the other entries for Challenge #8 so far, mine isn't even that good. The other entries this week so far are so good, they collectively might be the best entries since Week #1. And there's only 8 entries so far!