"Marge Schottenheimer": Though we asked you to write a simple beginning, it took you all to the very time limit to get your entries in. I'm amazed any of you get anything started, let alone finished.

Norman Poulenc: Oh, Marge, clearly you have never actually been burdened by the muse...

"Marge": And you, Norman, have never been burdened by an actual responsibility. But enough about you. Let's talk about these entries.

Norman: Beginnings follow schemas, and the best beginnings can both invoke and capitalize on the schema, while at the same time, twisting it, or even shattering it to pieces. The worst beginnings are trampled by the very conventions they are working with.

"Marge": Which is, indeed, the case for N. Darling, the idea of parodying the Bible is indeed an ambitious undertaking, but for the n-th time, you've given us a brilliant little gimmick with no actual story, no heart, no soul. Fortunately for me, I, too, have neithe4r heart nor soul, and so I suffer no pangs of remorse when I deliver you your rejection slip. You are dismissed, dear. Go write a scathing parody of me on your blog, which I won't read anyway.

Norman: Now that we've got that out of the way, we can discuss the remaining entries:

Daniel, we thought that yours would open into yet another wandering soul trying to find himself abroad, but you have mercifully taken us out of the interior world of your insipid angst, and given us some deliciously earthy details. Alas, it was the donkeys in love that saved you.

Suzanne, you are a master (mistress?) of convention, and for your thousands of surely adoring readers, you never disappoint. For the millions who will never read you, well, they can't be disappointed by the predictability of prose they don't read that features yet another rhetorical question posed by every Manhattan 20-something career gorl since 1950. But alaas, we cannot fault you for doing well what you do.

Ah, Perry, so hard-boiled, so impenetrable, so jaded. The first person address of the reader immediately brings us into your story. If only there were a sense of the story that followed.

And Lucy, after last week's cop-out, the judges were prepared to send you packing (indeed, if "Marge" had had her way, your rejection slip may have accidentally been dipped in poison ivy oils. accidentally, of course). But your beginning is both conventionaly and craftily subversive. Norman's only regret is that he doesn't have Penny Adler's number. Though "Marge"'s respect for you is returning, though, don't rule out the possibility that Ebay might be contacted with an anonymous tip about possible copyright infringement. In the meantime, Lucy, you are the winner. congrats.

Stay tuned for the next Top Novelist challenge, to be posted soon.