Its’ time for CityBeat’s eighth-annual Fiction 101 super-short-story contest, our unique way to celebrate excellence in economical creative writing.

Here’s the deal: You have 101 words to craft a compellingly humorous, sad, tragic, scary, heart-warming, silly or abstract story. All we ask is that you keep it under 102 words and that it be fiction (poems, diatribes, how-to manuals and ransom notes will be disqualified). The rest is up to your imagination. But please send us only your best TWO stories.

Our panel of judges will select three winners, and we’ll print all the really good ones in an upcoming issue. We will disqualify all entries of 102 words or more. Hyphenated words in compound modifiers, such as “low-rent district” count as two words, not one. The exception is when one of the hyphenated words cannot stand alone as a real word. The story title does not count in the word total. Some helpful hints: We’ll count “You will not make a monkey out of me” as nine words, but “You won’t make a monkey out of me” is only eight. Also, “Thirty-one” is two words; “31” is only one.

The deadline for entries is Monday, Sept. 27, at 5 p.m.

Make sure to give us your name, neighborhood of residence and phone number (not for publication). We prefer that you e-mail your entries to editor@sdcitybeat.com. But you can also snail-mail them to: Fiction 101, 3047 University Ave., Suite 202, San Diego, CA, 92104, or fax them to 619-281-5273. Please, please, please don’t use more than one delivery method, as our editor is easily confused. No hand-delivered entries.