Sludge Factory

How's that for a title?  My latest piece of writing came out like something produced from a sludge factory, and I was foolish enough to submit it as a contest entry.  Idiot!  (For the record, I have no idea what a sludge factory is.  It's the title of an Alice in Chains song.)

So, my story entry in the Cafe Doom contest was an epic failure for multiple reasons.  Bad writing, embarrassing typos, a tentacled monster (I'm not even a fan of tentacled monsters!), and a rough plot.  It was essentially a first draft.  Yes, I'd gone over the story once or twice, but I didn't allow enough time to pass between edits and I was too eager to get it done and submitted to the contest.  Yet, somehow, one person found it to be the best story of the bunch... Go figure.  Perhaps that person misunderstood the guidelines and voted for the three worst instead of the three best.

The story is good , it just needs the proper attention.  I think I'm also going to reverse the roles of my characters, and the monster is going to be of my own creation rather than rehashing the tentacles of Lovecraftian lore.  I like Lovecraft, but never was a big fan of the tentacled monsters--that's a subject for another blog (because I really believe his horror tales outside of the Cthulhu Mythos were far superior).

The story will live again and be better off for the comments some folks made during the competition, and I very much appreciate the feedback.  It helped out a lot.

I've got to get the hell out of this sludge factory!