Competitive Coffee-Drinking and Other Pursuits

 Anyone else watch much of the Olympics this year? (I might have seen more if the Japanese hadn't insisted on scheduling events at 3am.) The event that always fascinates me is the gymnastics - all that twisting and jumping and throwing yourself about. What happens if they twiddle too far in mid-air and fall off the beam or land on one of the judges? 

Continuing on this theme, one of the questions asked on the ACW Twitter account recently was "What would a writers' Olympics look like?" There were some great suggestions (@ACW1971, if you want to look). So, after much thought and planning, I can announce the events for the first Writers' Olympics as follows:

Coffee-drinking: competitors compete to see who can be the first to down ten mugs of coffee. Time penalties added if you have to take a toilet break. 

Balancing skills: the prize goes to the competitor who can hold a chocolate biscuit in one hand and a glass of wine in the other for the longest without actually tasting either.

Sitting and sighing; this may sound easy, but takes a lot of concentration, as points will be awarded for variety of sighs and facial expressions. Snoring is permitted, but will be scored on volume and rhythmic quality.

Procrastination: entrants must open up their work-in-progress before aiming to perform the greatest number of different displacement activities before their laptop battery dies.

Triathlon; contestants undertake three demanding disciplines. The first is sitting and sighing (as above). This is followed by speed-writing for sixty minutes using paper napkins and old envelopes with a blunt pencil. The final section is the editing marathon - the more words crossed out or replaced, the higher the score.

Unlike the Tokyo Olympics, the judges are highly susceptible to bribery, so competitors would be wise to pack copious amounts of chocolate along with their most comfortable slippers, a pair of faded jogging bottoms and a T-shirt covered in biscuit crumbs.

Let the games begin!

Fiona Lloyd is Chair of the Association of Christian Writers and writes regularly for Together magazine. Her first novel, The Diary of a (trying to be holy) Mum, was published by Instant Apostle in January 2018. Fiona also works for Christians Against Poverty.

 

Twitter: @FionaJLloyd & @FionaLloyd16