Question

Dear Mitch,

The other day you put up some kind of story that was filled with SAT words and you did it putting a lot of the words people confuse right next to each other so you get to see the difference between words that look like each other.  Do you have any plans to do that kind of thing again before the next SAT, because I think it actually helped.

Elliot

Cincinnati, OH

Answer

Dear Eliot, 

I hadn't planned on doing that again, but since your letter is the third one I've read so far today making the same request, I'd feel remiss if I passed on the opportunity.  So, as I slide my breakfast to one side and move my laptop closer, I ignore the plate's grating noise greeting me as I embark and embrace what I envision to be a benign enigma, hoping for an animated but not antiquated tale, from head to tail, and a story which will influence the eventual affluence of readers everywhere.  Fear not, for it won't end with a death.  Nor will it end with a dearth of ideas, ideals, broken idols (and the idolatry with which they are associated), nor will the story be one with a scare, nor a scar, nor any scouring or staring or starring or stirring, nor any struggling strangling, nor any form of firm shirking of duties; furthermore, it will not include, preclude, exude, or exclude the kind of lies that would belie a reader's belief in the power of a bailiff, yet will attempt to tell a fraction of a story that relates to the fraction of factors that once were related to defacto segregation, that awful separation, and I will do what I can to include characters that are variegated, vegetated, vilified, valued, vaulted, vile, and/or in some way ill. 

Not now, but someday, I will indeed relate an old legend that does have characters of such an ilk, and one day each and every one of those creations will be described by this scribe. 

Or, maybe not.

I hope this is what you meant, and I hope it helps!

Good luck on your big day,

Mitch