"Well, Why Not?"

"Well, Why Not?" was a short story Marshall Ferguson wrote for his creative writing class at University of California, Santa Barbara. His professor required students to submit their stories on the open market so Ferguson reluctantly sent it to New Fictions magazine. To his surprise, the magazine bought the story for $327.00 or eight cents a word. It was autobiographical in that the story was about a young man going to college while his parents divorced.

Sale of the story did give Ferguson his fifteen minutes of fame at UCSB. The campus newspaper published a story about him with a photo of him holding up a printout of the story. In addition, his professor gave him an A for the course.