Dear Readers:

We creative writers moved on to our next class assignment: writing fiction. Our textbook defined fiction as “…writing invented by the imagination.” That was scary, considering my left-handed brain craved facts and figures, not imaginary balderdash.  To make matters worse, we were to write flash fiction. I’d never heard of it. Jimmy handed out examples and explained we flashers could squander up to seven-hundred-fifty words telling out stories. Wordiness had always been my best friend. This restricted word count could be a real problem. The second problem was what to write about that would fit on a page or two and actually tell a story. I thought about topics heard on local radio stations, read in daily newspapers, or headlines glanced at waiting in the grocery check-out line. How did these rags do it? Who came up with this stuff – aliens taking over Oprah’s studio or losing fifteen pounds in two days or sleeping your way to a college degree? These publications had gobs of editors, producers, librarians etc collaborating with the on-air person, the staff writer, or the author. These visible people got all the credit while I suspected all the work came from the back office. Life’s not fair. I was the person pigeonholed into all of these roles. There was just me and the reader. The plot thickens.