Having Fun

Working in complex organizations brings many challenges. So many different interactions with so many different people. It can sometimes be difficult to navigate through the combinations of various personalities, organizational needs, and daily tasks to be done. Conversely, working with others to accomplish a major project or lead a team can be so much fun if you are lucky enough to work with talented people. I’ve been lucky in my career to have been part of a number of teams of talented people.

There are many elements needed for a good team to click. Obviously, team members need to know their stuff and be good at getting work done. They need to be able to play well with others of course, but there’s an element that doesn’t get talked about often. The best teams I’ve been part of have been filled with people who have fun with their teammates. Yes, they work hard. Yes, they take the work seriously, but often they don’t take themselves too seriously. People who are able to laugh at themselves and with others make the best teammates by far. Hard work is much more fun when you can find things to laugh about.

It’s in the spirit of having fun that I’m bringing you one of my favorite traditions – the Bulwer Lytton Awards. In case you don’t know or remember about these “prestigious” awards, here’s a brief description from the website:

“Founded in 1982 at San Jose State University in California, the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest challenges entrants to compose opening sentences to the worst of all possible novels.

The BLFC was the misbegotten brainchild of Professor Scott Rice. Sentenced to write a seminar paper on a minor Victorian novelist, he chose the man with the funny hyphenated name, Edward George Bulwer-Lytton. Best known for The Last Days of Pompeii, his novel Paul Clifford began with the famous opener that has been plagiarized repeatedly by the cartoon beagle, Snoopy

Later, Rice was to discover that the line had been around for donkey’s years before Lytton decided to have fun with it but the damage had been done. The BLFC had calumniated Lytton’s memory and rendered his name synonymous with bad writing, an author more widely read in his time than Charles Dickens..”

And, if you don’t remember, Snoopy is known for starting his novel with the immortal words, “It was a dark and stormy night…”

By the way, Bulwer-Lytton actually did coin the phrase, “The pen is mightier than the sword.”

Here’s the link to the full list of 2024 awards: https://www.bulwer-lytton.com/

Here are a few of my favorites:

Category Adventure, Dishonorable Mention:
“It had seemed a good idea at the time, the first night of my two-week all-inclusive vacation, spent with an affable stranger in a tapas bar oiled by an excess of Corona Extra and tequila shots, but now, in fancy dress holding a red cape, under a pitiless noonday sun, while 1000 pounds of snorting horned beefsteak eyed me malevolently, hoofing a hole in the dirt, the packed spectators oléing for all their worth, I, a junior sales rep in kitchen utensils from Milwaukee, wasn’t so sure.” David Hynes, Bromma, Sweden

Category Dark & Stormy, Winner
“It was a dark and stormy night, or more specifically, a Tuesday afternoon in Ireland.” Owen Doherty, Colborne, Canada.

Category Fantasy & Horror, Dishonorable Mention
“Harry Potter was a happy eleven-year-old wizard who lived with two kind and supportive parents in Godric’s Hollow because his parents hadn’t been wimps and they had used the Killing Curse on Voldemort as soon as he stuck his big noseless face in their house.” Ray Smith Crowley, Texas

Category Romance, Dishonorable Mention
“Joåo Diogo Diogo Pereira decided to walk down the cobblestone streets and past the azulejo-clad building facades to finally seek out the lovely Sara Catarina Custodio da Silva for coffee and Pasteis de natas down at the local pasteleria, or maybe vinho do porto in a taberna swelling with fado music, with schist stone walls steeped in centuries of sauced… for our story begins in Portugal which was probably not obvious.” Jon A Bell, Porto, Portugal

I hope you enjoyed these or others you find on the webpage. Even more, I hope that you have or are working to build a team that has fun while accomplishing good work!

Take care,

Gage