Leonard Rules!*

Ever since we announced recently that The Rap Sheet would host a contest to win a copy of Elmore Leonard’s 10 Rules of Writing, due out at the end of this month, I’ve been contemplating how best to select a winner. I initially liked the proposal put forth by Irish blogger Declan Burke, that the book should go to “the person who pens the best opening paragraph to a novel in the Elmore Leonard style while utilising as many of the ten rules as possible.” But that sounds awfully damn complicated, and might restrict the competition to people who are already writing for their livelihoods.

Instead, I’ve decided that we ought to spin this free book contest off from something we’ve already been doing on this page, which is collecting original crime-fiction limericks.

So here’s the deal: We’ll give a copy of Elmore Leonard’s 10 Rules of Writing to the person who can send us the cleverest Leonard-related five-line limerick. Feel free to integrate the titles of Leonard’s novels or any of his characters into your submission, or you might incorporate one or two of the 10 rules of writing that this author has spelled out before, and about which we assume he has more to say in his forthcoming book. Alternatively, you could set out deliberately to break as many of his rules as possible in your limerick. Anything you can do to make your doggerel distinctly Leonard-esque is fine with us. Extra points will be given for rampant creativity.

All limericks must be submitted to The Rap Sheet by next Saturday, October 27. E-mail them here. And please write “Elmore Leonard Contest” in the subject line.

We’ll announce the winner on October 30, which just happens to be the official publication date of Elmore Leonard’s 10 Rules of Writing.

Is all that clear? Then what the hell are you waiting for? You have less than a week to send in your contest entry. Get writing.

* Editor’s note: Leonard would no doubt hate that headline, as one of his writing prescriptions is “Keep your exclamation points under control.”