All the Contest That's Fit to Print

So, I got taken to task some about not entertaining you fine people sufficiently this past weekend. To wit, the questioner questioned: where have all the contests gone?

(Long time passing.)

And I said um, uh, hrm, look a pony! but that didn't work really. So we give you...

I Cannot Break the Bylaw! I AM the Bylaw!


So we've heard a great deal lately about what the SFWA and HWA bylaws allow and prohibit, sometimes mystically intoned as "that's what the bylaw states". We don't know why they're called bylaws (well, we do, that's what associations call theirs) but it does detract a certain gravitas, does it not? I mean, to break the law is one thing. To break the bylaw is...well, let's go jaywalking this afternoon!

We all also know, if we've been on the intertubes for a sufficient amount of years, that there are a lot of old, outdated, and just plain silly bylaws on the books in every city. I think there's one here about dragging dead horses down Yonge Street on a Sunday. Ottawa has some funny stuff about garages, and we all know that one out in the UK about when you are allowed to shoot an Irishman.

Therefore your mission today, if you choose to accept it, is to fill in this sentence:

There will be no __________ ...in SFWA.

Example solutions include:

There will be no watering your lawn between the hours of six a.m. and six p.m. ...in SFWA.
There will be no hedges between three and six feet...in SFWA.

All entries will be judged by reading aloud in a seprulchal, deathly serious tone, with the ellipsis indicating a Pregnant Pause (tm).

Show your work! Fabulous undisclosed internet prizes await you!

Thud: Above

April 5, 2007 Progress Notes:

Above

Words today: 500.
Words total: 500.
Reason for stopping: Need to stop and think about this a bit.
Liquid Refreshment: Water.
Munchies: Fish and chips.
Exercise: N/A.
Mail: Nomail.

Darling du Jour: I'm writing to you as myself. They say writers, especially of memoirs, shouldn't speak in the first person like this. Atticus explained that's because they don't know what they have to say for themselves yet, and I'm pretty sure I know what there is to say about me.
Tyop du Jour: N/A
Words MS Word Doesn't Know: N/A

Mean Things: The girl you love busting out of the safe place into the dangerous place.
Research Roundup: N/A
Books in progress: Alice Munro, Who Do You Think You Are?; Hal Duncan, Ink; Textbooks.

The glamour: Oh, this apartment is all glamour waiting to be uncovered right now.

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So. This is not the book I'm supposed to be writing. And I don't know how much mileage one can get out of taking umbrage with a 1980s TV show and one obsessive-making song, but...we'll see if we can get it past 35k.

Still, this is the first time in ever that I have been heavy with books (this plus Patron Saint of Nothing plus the end of the world desert coral apocalypse stuff book makes three). It's kind of startling and wonderful and annoying at the same time, since that means I have to write them now...