To celebrate our 25th anniversary, we're having a short-fiction contest. And by "short," we mean REALLY short—no more than 84 words long, excluding the title.
It's simple, really: Sit down (or stand, or recline, or whatever; it doesn't matter to us) at your favorite computer and write the best short story you can. Just make sure it's no more than 84 words long, not counting the title. We'll use the word-count function within Microsoft Word, by the way.
Oh, and no cheating. You can't inappropriately hyphenate multiple words into one, or abuse the fact that we're not counting the title. No cheating! No loopholes!
Why 84 words, you ask? Well, we're celebrating 25 years, and this is 2009, which means the Weekly first hit the streets in 1984.
E-mail any entries to mailbag@tucsonweekly.com NO LATER than Thursday, July 9. Enter as often as you'd like; just make sure you include your real name and your contact information, including your telephone number. Please, no snail-mail entries, and do not drop off entries in person at Weekly World Central; we don't have anybody around to type up entries that are not electronically transmitted.
After we get all of the entries, our esteemed panel of judges will select winners—and those immensely talented winners will win some fantastic prizes.
Winners and other selected entries will be included in the July 23 edition of Tucson Weekly.
So ... start writing!