I seem to recall that you did very well at one such. But as you may also recall, I did not too badly, though somewhat less than “very well,” in the same, a year later. 
Thanks for the vote! The “in-joke” reference has to do with a big kurfluffle awhile back with people here in a snit about some banning of posters, new policies on use of language, etc. that led to a spin off board of SDMB called - “Giraffe”. Many from SDMB moved over to that board instead of here.
I am honored that I got as many votes as I did - I wrote the story as I often write stories - just plow through without really knowing how it is going to end until it ends. I usually try to get a good opening statement and then go from there.
I sort of like to write myself into a corner, and then figure out how to get out. The story took me about 30 minutes to write - and maybe that shows. Could have used a few re-writes, but was rushed for time.
Still, I think all the stories were quite worthy. Just sorry more people didn’t read them and vote.
Here are my comments on a few of the stories that stood out to me. (For what that’s worth, as I am hardly some kind of qualified commenter type person.)
Rebirth. I liked this one. Very sweet, and I liked the parallel structure. I thought the dialogue in this one was well done.
Equinox. No worries, cmyk, it totally made sense to me! The prose was maybe a little on the purple side, but I thought it was a cool idea. It might have helped a little, for me anyway, to have had a little bit of a sense of who the narrator was in the opening paragraphs, rather than just the description of what the object looked like. I’m just throwing that out there, though. Again, totally not an expert.
State of the Art. I liked the idea behind this one too. As someone else said up-thread, the dissonance between the style of the first part and the style of the last couple paragraphs was jarring, but the idea of a character who is so committed to his own art that he’s willing to destroy it was interesting.
Giraffe Back Fat. I LOLed.
Lesson One. I liked this, and I feel that perhaps the short format hurt it a little, because I would like to see what happens to these characters as the story progresses. Lesson two sounds interesting!
I would like to thank everyone for the kind comments on my story, btw. I honestly was really expecting to log in and see “0 votes” so this whole thing has been really surprising and gratifying.
I’ll add a “well done” for Brickites. As somebody said above, it resembles something Stephen King might have included in an early collection of stories, or Rod Serling might have presented on The Twilight Zone. Certainly, writing this particular story in the the first-person gives the narrator’s situation a sense of immediacy and desperation, bordering on panic as the story goes on. Great story!
Thanks for that cmyk! I liked you *Equinox *story, and the others I liked are Lesson One and May Day.
jackdavinci, guilty as charged! ESL is my handicap, I have to say that for this contest I had less time to correct for style like in previous contests.
Yeah…I can only think of one, and several of us have already won it. 
Okay, I voted with a few hours to spare, despite the craziness of the past week. A few thoughts about my favorites:
Big Feet, I Know You’re The One: I loved all the Douglas Adams references, and the ending was nicely ironic. That poor nudist…
Rebirth: Even though ‘parent goes back to school with child’ stories are a bit of a cliche, it was sweet enough to pay off.
Equinox: Very powerful, especially because it doesn’t answer the question of ‘what happens at 12:24’ It’s something that I haven’t seen in an end of the world story before - the notion that want counts is how much you appreciate the whole world in that last moment.
May Day: A hilarious shaggy dog joke. I love the topical OBL reference, even though it may date the story.
And replies for those who have expressed an interest in my little tale:
Thanks for the comments, cmyk
jackdavinci: Wow, that’s a great honor to be sharing!
MsWhatsit: I’ve expanded one of these contest shorts into a full-length novel manuscript before, so who knows? Actually, the protagonist is based on one of the main characters in my novel ‘Chatterboxes’, Lisa Winfield, but that’s a storyline that has nothing to do with magic, so if I expand the magic lessons stuff, I’ll probably try to develop a different character as the student.
Congrats MsWhatsit! And thanks again Le Ministre for organizing this whole thing. Thanks for the comments, everyone as well. It was fun and good practice. I rarely do these sorts of things, but now I think I got the bug (god help us all).
Can’t wait for next round.
With the closing of the poll, the April 2011 SDMB Short Fiction Contest comes to an end. First, I would like to congratulate
GIGObuster
jackdavinci
Spoons
cmyk
Le Ministre de l’au-delà
DMark
Boyo Jim
MsWhatsit
chrisk and **
Elfkin477**. Take a well deserved bow, everybody!
And our winner is MsWhatsit for the outstanding story The Brickites. Congratulations and well done!
I would particularly like to thank The Mods for their help on this one - their clean-up work on my editing is greatly appreciated.
And a final thank you to all who have taken the time to read, comment on or vote for the stories in this thread. On behalf of all our writers, many thanks.
I’m planning to run another Short Fiction contest in late June. Meanwhile, for anyone interested, there will be another Poetry Sweatshop in the last week of May - I’ll keep people posted.
How late?
I may have to bow out for the first time, as I’m already at the point where I need to be prioritizing packing and such - I leave for the CSSF writing workshop a week from this morning!
Could you PM me when you do another of these contests? I always seem to miss the threads until it’s too late.