Working 27-Heaven by ajnspencer

There wasn't really a competition after I read this one - it was one of few that took the criteria and fitted them seamlessly into the story.

Just by far the most original and imaginative entry. So different from every other. A breath of super-fresh fresh air in a blog already abundant in fresh air.

Made me laugh, made me want to read more. Loved it.

Well done AJ, a fully deserved first place.

Second place goes to...

You Won't Hurt Me No More by SeasideMan

Powerful stuff. Tension expertly built up and then really hits the reader hard with the ending.

I actually sat there in stunned silence for a few moments after finishing it. Wonderfully written.

Of all the entries, I think this is the one that I most want to read more of. Any chance, SeasideMan?

Well done and thanks for taking part.

In third spot...

Being Idle by DominicGee

Really, it was like he was in my head for this one. The thoughts of every procrastinator. Simply written, yet very effective.

"I must work, I’ll work so I can be lazy again." Isn't that what it's all about, if we are realistic and honest about it? Great stuff.

Well done!

The competition is now officially closed, the winner will be announce tomorrow at noon.

Good luck to all entrants, and I am so glad I am not judging this

Welcome to Writing for Fun the Summer Writing Competition Group.

The idea is that you each write a story that is no more than 300 words long ( we wouldnt want our judges getting bored )

The story must contain the phrase 'a sunset on the beach somewhere within its body.

The competition will be independantly judged by the Brillian Rampart and he is choosing the second judge.

1st Prize is a certificate (of course) and a voucher for the purchasing of books (or DVD's/Music) whichever you desire

The competition opens as of today 27th June 2008 and closes on the 28th July 2008. Winners will be announced on the 1st August 2008

This is purely for fun, your entries can be about anything you like as long as it contains the phrase above.

So get writing and enjoy

Edit: Your entries need to be posted in here so the judges can read them.

August 2, 2008

Way back when, a friend introduced me to the idea of a man called Prince.

I went to see him live, a couple of times, and he was brilliant.

But.

I'm not one for performance but - su - fucking - perb,though he was...

I am however one for words.

He wrote this song when he was a bit part in The Village.

If anyone can ever find a more poetic lyric than "like a bird without a song", I bow to you.

For other Prince laments, I suggest "Sometimes It Snows In April", but in the meantime - the amazing Sinead O'Connor:

Auntie Kate had buried him in sand on their day out... it had looked all hot and golden but it was lovely and cold and muddy underneath... she had buried him in it up to his burning robust little red neck, which his mum had told him was her 'little choice cut' when she dried him after his Wednesday bath.

Auntie Kate had buried him in the sand with a blue spade, and it worried him a bit that he could still see his toes wriggling if he wanted them to when, for the first time in his life his head and the haircut his Auntie Jan had marched in and given him because she claimed he was 'lousy', were in two separate places entirely .

Declan was worried that his toes did not belong to him, that the curly pink widgets at the other end of the mound were pretenders.

'Nice' was a word his teacher Miss James said was overused and meaningless...

Declan felt disloyal in thinking that it did indeed feel nice here, but it would have been nicer if they hadn't all laughed and run away to do something that he couldn't see and come running back laughing again...

He'd thought it would be a lot more fun than it was now...

Like when Auntie Kate had married Uncle Chris last year and the grown-ups had fussed around him so much, tucking his big shirt in and making him feel like six, not five...

The grown-ups only wanted to see the sunset on the beach and have a laugh they say crossly, in the car going home...

Declan knows they're angry with him because he's crying, but Auntie Kate is crying too and holding him close under her coat...

But he doesn't know why.

Looking back on that crippled conversation with Verdun in New York, it occurs to me that almost everybody must have been in on the joke.

Everyone except me.

So understandably my sense of outrage encouraged a more aggressive approach.

I glanced across at Heinfield. He's laughing. His eyes are bright and he's writing something in his notebook.

You bastard, I thought.

Alas, poor Heinfield. I knew him well.

I knew him so well that he'd be dead soon enough. I have contacts.

The limo oozed out of West 47th onto Broadway.

Sitting tense in the cream leather, I was starting to feel a rising edge of panic.

Shit!

I shook my head. Open the tequila. Better now.

None of Verdun's goons had turned up to shoot. This was good.

I reached into my pocket and brought out the Mob money.

I almost didn't want to look at it.

I poured another tequila and, in my head, Nobody Smiled.

They owed me. I'd done their dirty work for six years and now it was time to...

To what? Get far away from the city. I was weary. But I had plans.

"You enjoy your sunset on the beach," Verdun drawled.

"You vindictive bastard," were my last words to him.

Years later and ten thousand miles away, I walk in the warm night rain, I see shapes and shrouds, and I always know what that sick lunatic meant.

I am a dead man.

Hungry, lonely, and scared, afraid not just of the dogs down below that had nipped and yapped at my shins, nor the red ants scurrying up and over my trembling thighs, I sat in silence watching what seemed a whole half world stretched out before me.

There was noise from the dogs, and flutters from the chickens, and slight murmurs from the unseen who lived just out of sight behind the palm canopy, steadily going about their business as though absolute terror and sheer beauty weren’t just a hair’s breadth away, as both were very much for me.

It was, I would later learn, a time like that which brings everything into a clear, ice cold sharp focus: The sudden gelling of a thousand mistakes, a hundred regrets, some half-hearted feelings of being wronged; of brain mathematics finally adding everything into a sickly, yet palatable, understandable, and unavoidable conclusion.

Any distraction will do – and a distraction that manifests itself in the shape of a horizon that sears into your eyes from left to right, earthy hues of bright orange turning a flat sea into fire, with a six-mile stretch of completely deserted sand gently coaxing it in, certainly does just that.

But a distraction is indeed only that: No matter where you run or hide, be it another’s arms, the bottom of a bottle, the other side of the world, you take everything else along with you like skin.

It took a friend who was then very much a stranger to put that focus into place. Afterwards, we climbed down from that majestic rock sitting sullenly on the edge of the world, and set about putting things right.

The one thing satisfying about mournfully watching a sunset on a beach, is you can guarantee someone else the most beautiful daybreak.