The Wordmaster Challenge: Why I Don't Write Chick Lit

So, it's Wednesday and it's on to my second bloghop of three this week. I know some people take part in multiple ones on the same day, but this is more than enough work for me!

The lovely Misha Gericke came up with an excellent idea to have a bit of fun and stretch our writing muscles with the Wordmaster Challenge. Every month she will post a writing challenge on a different theme. When I saw the theme for the first challenge I couldn't resist signing up. Our task was, in less than 300 words, to write the worst novel opening we could think of. How hard can it be, right?! Well, I was quite surprised!

I had loads of fun writing my entry and hope it is suitably awful. Please note this is not meant to offend any writers or fans of chick lit. I know there are some superb examples of the genre out there because I've read some of them! Think of it more as a gentle roasting of the worst aspects of the genre. I could have done the same thing with fantasy or sci-fi.

So, I present to you the opening of what I hope would be the worst chick lit novel ever, in 297 words. Strap yourself in!

*

It had been another long, bewilderingly boring day at work. Claire stepped off the bus near the corner of the gloomy street where she lived in South London and began to trudge boredly up the road. She glanced at her watch: half past seven in the evening and there was a light drizzle in the air, which didn’t exactly help to lift the vague mood of depressed blahness that she had been noticing for weeks now.

Walking up the short flight of stairs to Flat 3, she fumbled distractedly to retrieve her keyring which featured the beloved pink troll which meant so much to her, before unlocking the door which was painted an unsavoury shade of dark beige – probably the worst thing about the flat, she thought to herself annoyedly – and pushed it open, before wrenching off her sensible shoes, which she had to wear working as an accountant at a law firm, although they were uncomfortable, and expensive too, and shuffled into a pair of fluffy blue slippers with little bunny’s ears and faces on them, a relic of her student days; she considered that she had probably outgrown them at 37, but some things were too hard to let go of, and they were of great sentimental value.

Claire was fed up. When was a dashing, tall, dark stranger going to charge in on a white steed and sweep her off her feet? I mean, hello. She’d been single for, like, ever. Her biological clock was ticking loudly. There must be a man out there as desperate for a baby as she was.

She sighed exasperatedly and opened the fridge. She hoped ardently that a large glass of medium-priced red wine and Dirty Dancing on Channel 5 would provide the answer to her multitudinous problems.

*

Did you enjoy that? Go to the linky list to check out more bad beginnings! Thanks for this fun challenge, Misha!