Heh, I’m with you there. I had what I thought was a neat idea at about midnight last night (or this morning, I guess), and started pounding it out. By the end I was sure it was stupid and I was heartily sick of the whole thing. But I forced myself to keep going without trying to stop and revise (or cut, or stab, or set on fire) anything along the way, and consequently just managed to stumble drunkenly across the finish line. 
Heh. Shortly after I sent mine off, I discovered a typo, one not caught by spellcheck because it’s a real word too. Now I’m curious if people will realize that there’s an extra letter and know what I meant, or just think “I wonder what she meant by that, but hell, I can’t figure out half the rest anyway…”
Like O. Henry’s lion? SCTV link.
Ok submitted. wince
Oh, dear, I should have mentioned much earlier - please include your SDMB user name somewhere in your submission. I’ve figured out most of them, but I still have two who are mysteries…
Heh - thanks for the reminder! I just sent in your 3rd anonymous submission…email coming.
I wrote mine in one draft, in little dribs and drabs. My wife’s out of town this weekend so I’ve had fulltime puppy and kid care.
And I just noticed a typo … a homophone that spell check didn’t catch.
It was lots of fun though. I’m about halfway through reading the submissions. It’s amazing how many different directions people went.
I just sent in my submission… I hope it arrives, too! I think I pressed send at about 8:55 your time - it’s 3 in the morning here and I have a window open on my PC giving EDT. And it’s an OpenOffice doc… hope that’s all right:(
I wrote mine in one draft, starting about 3 hours ago… I have a hard time internalising deadlines when said lines are on the other side of the world!
All right, all submissions have been posted and the poll is established in the Anthology thread. We have until next Sunday to vote.
I took the editorial liberty of adding titles to the untitled submissions. I hope that is all right with the authors. I also included two stories whose usernames I didn’t know.
Even just glancing casually through these stories, there is some fantastic work here. You should all be very proud of yourselves.
And now, I have some very pleasurable reading ahead of me…
Heck, I just noticed a spelling error in my title! Argh! The only excuse I can offer is that I was in a hurry to send it; I was out of the house a few minutes after sending it, and I had no time for spellcheck.
Oh well. It was a good challenge, and I’m looking forward to reading the entries. Good luck to all!
And I noticed the spelling error in your title about ten minutes after the f&^%ng edit window was closed. As your editor, I accept full responsibility. I shall go iron my fingers for twenty minutes…
So, Le Ministre de l’au-delà…how do you fix the fact that both people who’ve voted picked two stories instead of one?
I sent mine in about ten minutes before the deadline. My muse must’ve been taking the weekend off. I’m not happy with it, but we’ll see how the voting goes. Thanks, Ministre, for setting this up. It was fun.
Glad you caved in, Cookies. 
You were definitely being harder on yourself than was warranted – that story was really sweet and touching, and you didn’t even need to have a lion come in and eat everybody. I liked it.
Thanks. I haven’t had a chance to read anyone elses yet, and I don’t want to spoil anyone as to who wrote what but I will say that my flash stuff often ends up seeming very different from what I usually read, so I have a hard time gauging my own stuff sometimes.
Just finished reading everyone’s stuff. The quality is very high there. I had voted before I realised that I could choose more than one option.
It’s okay; I’ve deliberately set it up as a multiple choice poll. This is based on how the voting for the Poetry Sweatshops has gone - readers seem to be more comfortable if they don’t have to pick only one poem out of the Anthology. (Rather than pick only one poem, readers would simply not vote.) Bringing it down to your favourite 3 or 4 has the effect of increasing the overall number of voters, and the pattern still shows which one has the greatest number of admirers.
Admittedly, this system would break down if everyone voted for all 20, but that hasn’t happened so far…
I shamefacedly admit that I got distracted this weekend. Had a good couple of killer opening paragraphs on Friday, then I saw my bf and got all distracted and . . . .well, better luck next time.
Another link to the Anthology Thread.