Maguire also does a variety of kidzbooks that are actually quite good.

Alibelle, after you've written and submitted your story, I want to send you a copy of one that I wrote a bunch of years ago called "Puck in Boots: The True Story" because I think you'd get a real kick out of it. But not before, because I'm thinking we'll have ended up going to some of the same kind of places thematically. :-)

Victor, I loved the excerpt from your essay. I'm not looking at it from the other side, but from further on this side. I'm not in or from an old factory town, but rather Boston-bedroom communities. But I know the oldness and oddness and am suspicious of the new. I understand the old newspaper men, even though that's never been my life or even in it.

In another, a punk band thrashes to the smell of motor oil embedded in the walls.

This was the only sentence that didn't work for me. It pulled me out of your Worcester streets. The "thrashes to the smell" was just too much of a mixed metaphor. I've tried re-working it, but I don't know what to suggest instead. I think it's important to keep both the thrashing and the smell of the motor oil, I just don't know how. Your essay is so rich I'm too intimidated to muck with it.

Okay. Here's my Common App college essay. I need it to be much shorter, I think, and lose most of the em-dashes, but all critcism is welcome.

I Was a Teenage (and Adolescent, And Childhood) Bookworm

Really, it's all "The Phantom Tollbooth"'s fault. There's no better explanation, no more fitting root cause for the person I've grown up to be. So that's got to be the reason.

You see, I am a geek. Not the pocket-protector-clad, high-water-pants-wearing, socially dysfunctional kind of geek; I'm the other kind. I'm the kind of geek who reads about the history of the English language (for fun! for fun on summer vacation!) and discusses heroic archetypes in "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" on the Internet, while maintaining a few basic social skills just in case I ever need them. While I'm at it, I construct sprawling, Dickensian run-on sentences. That's just the kind of geek i am.

Assuming you haven't already moved on to the application of an all-honors valedictorian who takes quadriplegic deaf-mute war orphans into her home and learns heartwarming lessons from them, you may be wondering why, exactly, I blame "The Phantom Tollbooth" for my overwhelming geekiness. It's really quite simple. I read "The Phantom Tollbooth" when I was very young and impressionable (I'd only just graduated from picture books) and fell in love with it immediately. Outside of Dr. Seuss, I hadn't read anything with real puns or wordplay before, and so was delighted by characters like the Whether Man (who tells you whether there’s going to be weather, and isn’t that the most important thing?), King Azaz of Dictionopolis, and Tock the watchdog. “The Phantom Tollbooth” was also my first fantasy book. Before it, I hadn’t known you could just make things up like it did, or how much fun it was to do so. Since then, words and highly unlikely fictional situations have been the two great loves of my life.

Even in elementary school, I was geeky. I read Roald Dahl’s “Matilda” shortly after “The Phantom Tollbooth,” and it created, in addition to increasing my already strong love of fantasy and humor, the hope that I too could gain superpowers if I just read enough. Sadly, I still can’t lift SUVs with the sheer power of my thoughts, but there have been a few other benefits from a lifetime of bookwormishness. I’m more at home with a pen or a keyboard than most, and I have an instinctive sense for what makes good writing. The many places and casts of characters I’ve become familiar with -- talking animals, no-nonsense witches, private velociraptors, a dreamlike world beneath the streets of London, the Restaurant at the End of the Universe-- have made my disbelief about as heavy as a feather, and just as easy to suspend. The movies and television I watch reflect that familiarity with the fantastic. My favorite shows are, respectively, about a little blond girl who kills vampires and an American astronaut stranded on the far side of the universe.

Luckily for me, the Internet has made it a lot easier to be a geek. In middle school, I was embarrassed to be called a bookworm, and ashamed to be seen a brain. I blushed and stammered my way through the seventh grade, mortified that I was being taunted by people who often got better grades than me. I’m not embarrassed any more. I know geeks all over the world-- the “Buffy” discussion group I’m a part of has been going strong since I started high school-- and I’ve learned form their example. If people in such diverse situations, with lives so different and so like mine, are all proud to be geeks-- well, what’s stopping me? Besides, it’s a lot more fun to analyze the narrative structure of “Farscape” or “Firefly” than it is to track the love lives of the “Dawson’s Creek” crowd.

I still love words just as much as I did the first time I read “The Phantom Tollbooth;” to be honest, I’m a complete word nerd. I’d rather write a sonnet than free verse, and lately I’ve found myself thinking in iambic pentameter. I regard writers the way some people do rock stars-- you should’ve seen me after Neil Gaiman answered my e-mail. I’ve been known to answer questions about language in far too much detail-- after being subjected to a lengthy lecture on the origins of “uncanny,” all one friend could say was “Wow. You really are a geek.” She’s really right. I am.

Holli! It's excellent.

I love it.

I'm just wondering, I could be being stupid, but why

I blushed and stammered my way through the seventh grade, mortified that I was being taunted by people who often got better grades than me.

say they got better grades than you?

Looks good, Holli. A few things that I noticed:

Outside of Dr. Seuss, I hadn't read anything with real puns or wordplay before, and so was delighted by characters like the Whether Man (who tells you whether there’s going to be weather, and isn’t that the most important thing?), King Azaz of Dictionopolis, and Tock the watchdog.

Could be tightened up a bit, to maybe "Outside of Dr. Seuss, I hadn't read anything with real puns or wordplay, and so I was delighted by ... "

Before it, I hadn’t known you could just make things up like it did, or how much fun it was to do so.

The phrasing here is a little awkward, but I can't really see a good way to rephrase it. Maybe "Before I read it, I hadn't known that such fantastic situations could exist, or how much fun it was to imagine them." But that doesn't really sound quite right either, so I dunno.

I read Roald Dahl’s “Matilda” shortly after “The Phantom Tollbooth,” and it created, in addition to increasing my already strong love of fantasy and humor, the hope that I too could gain superpowers if I just read enough.

That "created" is too far from what it's referring to. "...shortly after "The Phantom Tollbooth, and in addition to increasing my already strong love of fantasy and humore, it created the hope that I too could ..."

Sadly, I still can’t lift SUVs with the sheer power of my thoughts, but there have been a few other benefits from a lifetime of bookwormishness.

I like the "lift SUVs" phrase. Maybe change "other" to "actual" or "real" or just leave it out entirely, since you didn't list any actual benefits yet for there to be an "other."

In middle school, I was embarrassed to be called a bookworm, and ashamed to be seen a brain.

You might was that to be "seen as a brain." Or maybe not, because that would mess up the nice parallel structure.

I’ve learned form their example

from

I’ve been known to answer questions about language in far too much detail-- after being subjected to a lengthy lecture on the origins of “uncanny,” all one friend could say was “Wow. You really are a geek.”

You might want to get rid of the beginning of this sentence; it works fine starting at "after."

I liked this. It's a good concept for a college essay, I think.

why say they got better grades than you?

Um. Good question. I guess the answer is that... it's true, even though it makes me look bad. Okay, that bit's gone.

If you really need to make it shorter, I think you can probably combine the penultimate paragraph with the one before it, and get rid of some stuff. I like both of those paragraphs, but that's the first place I see to take out stuff if it need to be shorter. You could even just go straight from "The movies and television I watch reflect that familiarity with the fantastic" to "it’s a lot more fun to analyze the narrative structure of “Farscape” or “Firefly” than it is to track the love lives of the “Dawson’s Creek” crowd" if you need to get the word count way down.

Holli, that was wonderful! (And oddly like one of my college essays, so it's probably not surprising that I like it.) Also, what Hil said.

Thanks, Theodosia! Now I really want to read your story, rather than write mine, even though, with the introduction of the evil TEMPtress, I finally have a conflict. [Editor's note: How many commas can I fit in a sentence?]

Holli, my only thought--aside from Hil's remarks on some sentence structures--was with the section about the paraplegic and the heartwarming lessons. We here understand the irony and sarcasm, but the people who read it may be the sorts who get teary eyed at such stories. Possibly something less specific like, "Hopefully you haven't put this down and turned your attention to the essay of the student council president who tells stories of all his generic good deeds." What you have is slightly on the catty side--funny as heck, but not everyone is as advanced as us.

Before it, I hadn’t known you could just make things up like it did, or >how much fun it was to do so.

My take on this sentence: "Before 'Toolbooth' (or just 'it' could work, I haven't checked to see if you've used the actual word Toolbooth right before this sentence or not), I hadn't known you could just make things up in a story, or how much fun it was to do so." It's a good sentence, reflecting the revelation of what true fiction is. The phrase "in a story" is optional.

Lord, I feel pedantic.