Two weeks ago,  Gregory K. Pincus, a writer in Los Angeles posted an invitation on his blog GottaBook. He invited readers to write "Fibs" - six-line poems that use a math formula called the Fibonaci sequence.

The pattern is like this - each line must have a certain number of syllables which equals the sum of the syllables in the line above. Before you think it's too complicated, here is the basic six-line pattern:

1
1
2
3
5
8

Within a week, news of this invitation had spread like wildfire across the Internet - and more than 100 blogs were linking to GottaBook--and piles and piles of Fibs were pouring in. The New York Times even wrote an article about this! 

Here's our Fib:  

This
Blog
Calls for
A round of
Applause from all you
Dedicated fans out there.

Want to post a Fib on WORD? Post a comment.

Hello, Word-sters! I'm Meredith, a health reporter and writer who works here at Weekly Reader with Bryon and Sandhya. This contest offer showed up in my e-mail inbox this morning and I wanted to share it with you all:

What's the REAL DEAL on Growing Up in the Age of AIDS?

Who can enter? Anyone 13-18 years old living in the United States
What should you write? A story or script dealing with HIV/AIDS (up to 10 pages)
When is the deadline? June 13, 2006
Where can I get more information? www.ScenariosUSA.org/contest/
Why? It's been 25 years since HIV and AIDS first emerged. This means you're the first generation to grow up in this era--for you, AIDS has always been around. How do you feel about it? This contest gives you the opportunity to share your thoughts with the world.

Scenarios USA is an organization that helps teens make films, BET is the cable network Black Entertainment Television, and the Kaiser Family Foundation is a nonprofit health care organization. They've all teamed up to give teens a chance to talk about the impact HIV/AIDS has on their communities, relationships, and lives. Submit a story or a script of up to 10 pages on the theme, "What's the REAL DEAL on Growing Up in the Age of AIDS?" and you could win the chance to have your entry filmed by a Hollywood director and shown nationwide on BET in 2007.

Put on your thinking cap and get busy! You can submit an entry by yourself, with friends, or even as a class. There's an application and more resources for you and your teacher at www.ScenariosUSA.org/contest/, including a "Mini Creative Writing Workshop" to help you get started. Good luck!

Meredith is the editor of Current Health 2. You can check out her magazine online by clicking here.

A narrative story is a retelling of a personal experience that has had a significant impact on your life. I recently assigned the wririting of a narrative story to my 9th grade class. “But nothing important has happened to me yet,” my students moaned and groaned. I explained to them that determining whether or not something is “important” is all relative.

“25 years from now,” I told them, “moving to a new school district in the middle of the year may seem insignificant, but right now, at 15, it can be the biggest event of one’s life.” Once they looked at the assignment from that angle, their pens started moving. The topics students chose to write about varied a great deal and included everything from the birth of siblings to the loss of family members, from stories of their best friends to playing on sports teams.

Once the assignment was written, the students read them aloud to the class. Many were nervous, as some of their narratives were very personal, but ultimately, this turned out to be a wonderful experience for the whole class. Some students became emotional telling their stories. They were all very supportive of each other, though.

Before my students completed this assignment, I read them an example of a personal narrative of my own. It is about the 5 people I lived with in college. Although it was an experience my students had yet to have, I chose a tone and language that was appropriate for them. I believe that the story did reach them and even inspire them a bit. I even had a few students urge me to send my story to the friends I had written about, which I did. And now, I am sharing my personal narrative with you. My hope is that, by the time you are done reading, you will have a better understanding of the personal narrative and maybe even try to write one of your own! Enjoy!

      We couldn’t have known that this place would affect us so profoundly—the six of us. We couldn’t have known that this place would teach us anything about who we were, what we wanted in life, what we feared, how to love. The house was nothing special, just a faded blue ranch with a finished basement that always smelled like a swamp. It was small. It was ugly. It was ours, for one year. On a sweltering June day in one of the last years of the millennium, we moved into 88 Sunset Avenue, a little blue shack planted awkwardly in a cul-de-sac on a street a block away from abandoned train tracks. Our neighbors were made up of grouchy retirees, fellow college students, and a few folks who redefined for us the word “redneck.” We were walking distance from our college campus, but we never did seem to get up in time to actually walk there. Weekday mornings were often spent frantically running around looking for keys, books, and shoes in our disastrous living room. Weekend mornings were usually spent sleeping well into the day, then emerging from our rooms like vampires from their coffins, eyes averted from the sun, arms outstretched for sustenance. Sometimes others were there too, strewn about in blankets and sleeping bags, victims from the previous night’s escapades, but usually it was just us. We liked it that way, after all. We weren’t just six people living in a house, we were Sunset. A clan. A tribe. We spoke our own language and had our own rituals. Sure we had plenty of parties and visitors, but at the end of it all, in the wee hours of the night, the six of us shared a secret world.

      Have you ever lived with people who you are not blood-related to? It’s strange how seeing each other in your pajamas and sharing the same bathroom instantly creates a kinship between people. There’s a magic that happens between anyone sharing the same roof. You hear each other snoring at night. You drink out of the same milk carton. Your laundry finds its way into the same wash, underwear and socks all happily mingling together in a sudsy pool. There is something so intimate, so personal about a simple thing like laundry sharing the same basket.

      Make no mistake; we were all friends before we lived together—me, Kerry, Bryon, Dave, Dave, and Dave. Yes, three Daves in one house. Sharing that house, though, it changed everything. The word friends became too small for what we were, yet the word family implied that we were somehow forced to love one another, the way you are forced to love your mother’s great, great, Aunt Marie whom you’ve never even met. We had chosen to live together in that hideous excuse for a house, and once we moved in together, everything was somehow new. I never had a sister, so living with a girl who was not my mom was strange for me….and wonderful. On Wednesday nights at eleven o’clock Kerry and I discovered this little known television program in its very first season. It would go on to redefine lifestyles for single women in cities all over the world, but we just knew that it was our Wednesday night-bonding time. No boys allowed. Cocktails and facemasks and girl talk. I had never spent so much time with a girl who wasn’t my mom. Kerry was the older sister I never had, there to give me advice and build my confidence when I had none.

So I saw the SpongeBob SquarePants movie last night. Why? I dunno. Because I sometimes have the mentality of a 6 year old, I guess. That's not necessarily a bad thing either, you know. Do you remember what it was like being 6? I have a vague recollection of laughing all the time and being totally worry-free.

Anyway, it was a very funny film. I found myself laughing out loud quite a few times. SpongeBob is quite a character. And that's an understatement. I mean look at him. Just look at him! He makes you dizzy with glee. Most of the movie was about SpongeBob and his best friend Patrick doing ridiculous things. But there was also a message: it's OK to be a kid.

Of course, I couldn't just watch and enjoy the movie without thinking about how I could blog about it later. So this is what I came up with:

Try writing a story for little kids. You can use SpongeBob as your inspiration or any other silly character you may know of. What is it about these zany characters that draws younger audiences to them? Is it their innocence? Their lack of responsibility? Or just the way they smile?

Who knows, maybe you'll come up with the next great Kindergarten phenomenon? And if not, you've at least had some practice in writing a characteristic. You can use that in your future writings. Score!

Oh yeah, and take SpongeBob's words to heart: "You don't need a license to drive a sandwich." Always remember that. It may just save your life one day.