HELLO, PIPSQUEAK!!

I'M GONNA CRUSH YOU LIKE THE LITTLE, ROTTEN GRAPE THAT YOU ARE! I'M GONNA TAKE YOU BY THE ARM AND SPIN YOU AROUND THE RING UNTIL I GET DIZZY! AND THEN I'M GONNA LET GO AND WATCH AS YOU GO FLYING INTO THE STANDS! I'M GONNA HURT YOU SO BAD, YOUR DISTANT THIRD COUSIN IS GONNA FEEL IT AND SAY "OWEEE!!!" ... THAT'S WHAT'S COMIN' TO YA! THAT'S WHAT'S ON THE WAY! ... Right after I finish reading this delightful book by Jane Austen.

What?

Are you into wrestling? Do the letters W, W, and E, mean more to you than Wild West Earmuffs? Well if so, you'll be excited to hear that World Wrestling Entertainment is dishing out more than the usual beatings this summer. They're giving away free posters of your favorite wrestling superstars and all you have to do is read a book and write about it a little! It doesn't get much better than that!

To get your free poster, simply write a book review of any length (but put in a little more effort than Hulk Hogan does when opening jars of pickles) and fill out this form. Mail it off to the WWE and in no time at all, you'll have your very own, authentic wrestling posters in your mailbox!

Everything should be this easy.

The following post was written by Starre Vartan. Starre is one of the editors on Current Events magazine here at Weekly Reader and this is her first time blogging for Word ... but certainly not her last.

A.S. Byatt is a writer who really knows how to spin a yarn. In her short story collection from 2005, The Little Black Book of Stories, Byatt explores the world of dark fairy tales. Fanciful stories are not just for little kids anymore. They are a much overlooked genre of their own, like science fiction or mystery. Historically, fairy tales were meant to be cautionary or moral tales, not necessarily bedtime stories.

Like the original tales of the Brothers Grimm and the color fairy books (The Red Fairy Book, The Violet Fairy Book), the stories in the Little Black Book of Stories are not cute or necessarily pleasant, though some do have happy endings. Instead these stories are crafted with an eye towards understanding humanity through creative prose and a step-outside-of-normal unreality.

Why not try your hand at writing a fairy tale? Like Byatt, you can set your tale in the present day, or you could try a more traditional setting from the past. You can even write a futuristic fairy tale, like several of Margaret Atwood's novels.   

E.B. White's birthday is today. You know E.B. White, don't you? Come on! You read Charlotte's Web, right? Well, he wrote it. And you knew that. I know you did. Good job.

Well, you may be surprised to know that E.B. also co-wrote The Elements of Style with William Strunk Jr. This is a very tiny book but it is filled with some of the most explosive grammar advice this side of the Mississip! Seriously, if you thought grammar was fun before, just wait until you pick up this gem of a book! It will knock your socks off! I say this as a person who has had his socks knocked off before. It's a long story about a fire-breathing dragon and an evil sorcerer with a weird obsession with feet. I won't bore you with the details here. We're talkin' about grammar, baby! Yah! Bring it! And do you know what else? This book can fit in your back pocket! You can read it on the train! At the movies! Even swimming in the ocean or climbing Mount Everest! No more making excuses for skipping that trip to Mars this year! You've got The Elements of Style to make the journey all the more exciting!

The New York Times says, "Buy it, study it, enjoy it. It's as timeless as a book can be in our age of volubility."

What's volubility? I don't know! Let's look it up!

vol·u·ble  

1. Marked by a ready flow of speech; fluent.

Awesome! Yah! I knew that! I think. Maybe a long time ago. Maybe now? I don't know! Woo hoo! The point is that yes, we do live in an "age of volubility." Everyone uses big words and sharp sounding syllables. Listen up! Get a vocabulary! Work it! Yah!

Hey, I have a joke for you. What's the differerence between "regardless" and "irregardless"? Give up? About the same as the difference between "can't" and "cannot". Ah ha! Ahh ha! Ha ha ha ha ha ha! Oh! Somebody stop me! Seriously, regard the irregardless on page 50 of William Strunk Jr. and E.B. White's masterpiece grammar phenomenon, The Elements of Style.

Be the first on your block to own The Elements of Style. Impress all your friends with nonrestrictive modifiers and auxillary verbs! Is some bully stealing your lunch money every day? Shove a sentence fragment in his face and then don't tell him why what you've said was grammatically wrong! It'll drive him nuts! Observe:

"Hey bully! Because muscle mattered slightly!"

"Huh?"

"Yah Yah Yah! Take that, you embodiment of future insecurities!"

Buy this book! Buy this book! Buy this book! Buy this book!

One more thing, here is a beautiful quote from E.B. White. He proclaimed it one time when he wasn't personifying barnyard animals or partying up the grammar world:

"All I hope to say in books, all that I ever hope to say, is that I love the world."

Word.

Are you traveling this summer? Here's a nifty tip to keep the writer within you churning out ideas: send yourself a postcard each day!

I went to Europe for the first time this summer, and every day for the two weeks I was there, I sent a postcard to my address back home. The thought of writing an entire journal entry each day seemed too time-consuming with all the sight-seeing and and traveling I was doing, but I still wanted to remember every minute of my trip. Writing a postcard every day was the perfect solution. It was like a daily journal of my experiences, and because a postcard is so small, I was easily able to find five minutes to fill one up each day. I wrote down funny stories, snippets of dialogue, story ideas, descriptions of places or people I saw ... goldmines for future writing! And I chose pictures of places I had visited, so each postcard has an added bonus of being a visual reminder of my trip as well. 

A twist on this idea is if you are traveling and staying in touch with friends or family via e-mail, send the e-mail to your address, as well. That way, when you arrive back home, you will have an inbox full of "diary entries" in the form of letters back home. 

So you see, a vacation away from home doesn't have to be a vacation away from your writing life! :)