I found the funnest contest for you word lovers! (Um, is funnest a word? The red line thingie is not showing up under it, so I guess funnest is okay. But P.S. Thingie is not.)

The Georgia Review decided to honor Ambrose Bierce with a Devil’s Dictionary for the 21st Century. Now, you may recognize old Ambrose as the guy who wrote that short story you had to read in high school (“An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge”). But he also penned The Devil’s Dictionary, a dictionary of common terms with some rather uncommon, not to mention, satirical definitions. Take his definition for Dictionary: A malevolent literary device for cramping the growth of a language and making it hard and inelastic. This dictionary, however, is a most useful work.

Oh, that Ambrose was a hoot and a half. Until he took off for Mexico and disappeared. Still, I’m sure Ambrose regaled the local ruffians with his usual wit right up until the moment that they, well, made him disappear. But you want to know about the contest. Send in your new and satirical entries by December 1 (maximum length, 200 words) and if your word is chosen, you’ll receive a lovely honorarium, or perhaps even the 1st, 2nd, or 3rd place prize. You have to mail that submission, so start thinking and writing. Get all the details here.

If you read about the Abilene Writers Guild contest over at Finders & Keepers, then you can skip ahead because you already know that the contest has a category for children’s writers. But if you write short stories, poetry, flash fiction, articles, or even novels, there’s a category for you, too. And prizes! And an entry fee (but it’s only 5 bucks, unless you’re sending in your novel excerpt). You only have till November 30th, so go check out the details here and jump on that contest!

And finally, a quick update on that National Novel Writing Month. Yes, I signed up. That would explain the neat little badge I added to my blog (I’m not gonna lie. I’m a sucker for blog stuff like that. Not enough of a sucker to add the word count widget, though). And I’ve written a ton of words. They may not necessarily be good words, but they are words (and not words like thingie, either). Which reminds me of Ambrose Bierce’s definition for novel: a short story padded.

Which brings me to the end of this rather wordy post. I’m sure you’re wondering about that picture of the monks, working on the sand painting. It’s simple, really. A picture’s worth a thousand words. (Wonder if the nanowrimo folks will let me throw in a couple of pics?)