The soul of wit

One year while I was in graduate school, I served as the literary editor for the campus student magazine. My job was to review student-submitted poetry, short fiction, and creative nonfiction and select the few best to publish. After several months of enduring vomit-inducing drivel, I tried to energize the campus literary talent by having a “flash fiction” contest. Flash fiction is a relatively recent term. For those not familiar, it refers to short stories that happen to be very short—usually less than 1,000 words, and often much shorter. I figured dangling a prize before the student body was the surest way to flush out any creative talent lurking about campus, and, even if most of the entries were terrible, I didn't have to read them for very long. It was a win-win situation.