When Mary and I first started looking at the Internet, sitting side by side in chairs, smiling at the monitor, we were charmed by the idea you could not only read the Internet, but write it, in a variety of ways.

One way to interact was to leave a message on a site, either in a forum or a guestbook, and I think our first such participation in that regard came on the Taco Bell site, which we had wandered to trying to find out whatever happened to the enchirito, a delicious, fifty-cent dish the fast food restaurant had, at that time, withdrawn from its menu. We were delighted to find several visitor messages at the site bemoaning the loss of the enchirito, and we posted our own, evoking its perfect form, its five black olive slices arranged scampishly across its top.

After that we discovered other sites where you could shoot dancing bears, build a cartoon body by dragging limbs across the screen with the left side of your mouse held down, and calculate the number of hours that had passed since your birth.

When I created SENTENCE I wanted to make part of it interactive in that same spirit. Since I'm a writer, I decided to offer visitors a chance to post their own writings on this site, but rather than just any writing, for what's the challenge in that, it would have to be a rewrite of a famous author, and in fact a rewrite of a specific passage in that writer's cannon. From that evolved what I think of as the "family pages" of SENTENCE: Every Man a King, Every Woman a Koontz, Every Child a Barker. Later, I added a fourth interactive feature, in which visitors could post their earliest memory.

Later still, I added additional interactive features, but all of these created by other people: a Brain Test, which allows visitors to discover the degree to which they are left- or right-brained; and a simple paddle game, Pong.

Part of writing is lying in bed, awake but eyes still shut, breathing through your nose, letting your thoughts go where they may. Part of writing is scribbling down notes during the day hard to decipher when you sit in front of a computer six months later. Part of writing is the excitement of tapping out on a keyboard with your fingers the story itself, misspelling by misspelling, thrilling at how an embellishment wedges between two words. Part of writing is editing.

Sculptors talk of 'finding the statue in the rock', and that really is what editing does. Within each sentence is a perfect sentence, an ideal way of expressing the same ideas (ideas rather than idea because each sentence teems with ideas, like each fish net teems with snapper and flounder, scrod and halibut, thorny orange crabs, big ugly starfish, a shoe, and a tire tube with something written in yellow on the rim).

During editing, writing becomes woodworking, as you test each groove and dovetail to make certain they're going to support the weight of the reader's eyes. Words get rearranged, new ones slid in, old ones popped out, nail holes hidden with paste, until a sentence seems strong enough to span that wide, wonderful distance between periods.

This "Rewrite Best Selling Authors" section features three exercises in editing.

I've taken three well-known authors, Stephen King, Dean Koontz and Clive Barker, and rewritten a passage from each man's work. The point to the exercise is to demonstrate that a scene can be written in a variety of ways, with a variety of words, through editing. At the end of each rewrite, I invite you to create your own version of the same passage, a rewrite I'll post on this page.

To share your rewrite with the rest of us, click on the button below the appropriate section and e-mail the text to me. I'll post it on this page within a week. In your e-mail, please let me know how you want to be identified as the author of the edit. This could be your real name, a pseudonym, or that great, long-lived author, 'Anonymous'.

Ready to be Stephen King, Dean Koontz, or Clive Barker? Think about it a little, write your sentences down in one of those fancy books full of blank pages with ragged edges, or on the back of a utility bill, then send it to me. Good luck!

I've taken the opening paragraphs of a novella by Stephen King, probably the most popular writer since God came out with the bible, and rewritten them. The novella is The Mist, included in his 1985 collection, Skeleton Crew.

This is your opportunity to rewrite Stephen King, letting the rest of us know how you would present his opening scene.

Your version should at least be somewhat faithful to the original text. For example, in my rewrite I reference the limp flag, the shallow swim, the ham sandwiches.

The Mist first appeared in Dark Forces, edited by Kirby McCauley, Copyright © 1980 by Stephen King. Skeleton Crew is published by G. P. Putnam's Sons, Copyright © 1985 by Stephen King. All rights reserved. The excerpt below is meant for review purposes only.

This is what happened. On the night that the worst heat wave in Northern New England history finally broke- the night of July 19- the entire western Maine region was lashed with the most vicious thunderstorms I have ever seen.

We lived on Long Lake, and we saw the first of the storms beating its way across the water toward us just before dark. For an hour before, the air had been utterly still. The American flag that my father put up on our boathouse in 1936 lay limp against its pole. Not even its hem fluttered. The heat was like a solid thing, and it seemed as deep as sullen quarry-water. That afternoon the three of us had gone swimming, but the water was no relief unless you went out deep. Neither Steffy nor I wanted to go deep because Billy couldn't. Billy is five.

We ate a cold supper at five-thirty, picking listlessly at ham sandwiches and potato salad out on the deck that faces the lake. Nobody seemed to want anything but Pepsi, which was in a steel bucket of ice cubes.

The American flag my dad hoisted over our boathouse in 1936 had laid limp against its white pole for weeks.

We were in the worse heat wave in northern New England history. The heat was a solid thing. Each time we had to walk through it, it got into our clothes, like glue.

That afternoon the three of us went swimming in Long Lake, but the water was no relief unless you went out deep. Steffy and I wanted to, but didn't, because Billy couldn't. Billy was five.

Afterwards, back home, we sat out on the deck, drinking Pepsi out of a steel bucket of floating ice. At five-thirty Steffy served supper outdoors, ham sandwiches and potato salad. I took a bite out of the middle of each triangle of sandwich- the best part- and left the rest on my plate. I didn't bother to pull the upside-down metal fork out of the center of the mound of potato salad. The salad looked warm.

It was too hot to talk. We sat in our deck chairs with our bare legs spread, hair plastered against our heads.

I was five minutes into squeaking my wet palm over my forehead, eyes closed like it would be cooler if I couldn't see, when the heat suddenly broke. Before I could get my hand down, rain was skidding paper plates and napkins across the deck, blowing over the green-and-white striped umbrella above the table where the food was.

Steffy stood dripping by the open sliding doors, mouth gleefully open, L.L. Bean t-shirt nippled against her torso, holding Billy's bent head against her skirt, bugging her eyes at me.

The rain was so cold it was almost too cold.

It was the loudest thunderstorm I ever experienced. Safe inside the house, huddled around the kitchen table, steam from the teapot rising, we had to repeat what we said each time a clap slammed down against the shingles.

At the time, back there at the beginning, it seemed like the best thing that had ever happened to western Maine.

To share your rewrite of Stephen King with the rest of us, click on the button below and e-mail the text to me. I'll post it on this page within a week.