Five-seven-five syllables. And it's so easy, even a monkey can do it. All it takes is one click on the "New Haiku" button to create what the site calls a "cyberpseudopoetic masterpiece." Accent on the pseudo.

And you can find long prose on the Internet. Most of it was not written for a clickable medium. "There's a lot of old-style writing," Nielsen says. "A majority of Web sites are dominated by straight dumps of dead-tree information."

But that is changing. At Web speed, humans are creating -- and stumbling upon -- innovative ways to express ourselves online:

• Blogs. Web logs, which are personal online diary-like sites, get a lot of attention. Old-medium writers such as Andrew Sullivan, former editor of the New Republic magazine (www.andrewsullivan.com), have turned to the Web. The Internet has also made bloggers out of unlikely participants, including Barbra Streisand, Fred Durst and Avril Lavigne. The musician Moby keeps a running journal on his site (www.moby.com). Funny guy Dave Barry warps the Web his way (davebarry.blogspot.com). Novelist William Gibson occasionally blogs between novels (www.williamgibsonbooks.com). And the Web is awobble with personal blogs from around the world, set up through countless clearinghouses such as BlogSpot (new.blogger.com/blogspot-admin). The writing is personal and pointed. Here's a recent excerpt -- errors and all -- labeled "The State of Our Union Is Lousy," from the blog of Eliot Danner (homepage.mac.com/eliotdanner), a 20-year-old international studies major at George Washington University: "BUT there is light at the end of the rainbow, tonight was the first time that I saw him looking as if he didn't have much confidence in the message, the speech was dry and dull he left with no talking points. I mean what kind of an issue is steroids? Hes loosing it, and that is a good thing. The aura of the untouchable numbers is fading, he was struggling there to hold the audience. Also, he still doesn't know how to use a telepormpter. Thank god!" Danner says, "Blogging is great. I'm able to say exactly what I think about George Bush."

• Fan fiction. Scores and scores of fiction fans have found a way to participate in the lives of their favorite books, movies, TV shows, cartoons and video games. They write story lines, called fanfic. And within fanfic, you find subgenres, such as sexually charged "slash writing," which is for mature audiences only.

On Fanfiction.net you'll find homespun sequels, prequels and spinoffs of everything from "Harry Potter" and "Star Trek" to "Queer as Folk," "American Pie" and "Max Payne," the video game.

Xing Li, a 26-year-old software developer in Alhambra, Calif., founded the site in 1998. To date, some 180,000 fanfictioneers have taken advantage of the opportunity. A few authors, including Anne Rice and Nora Roberts, have objected to the genre. (Rice says she is still developing her characters and doesn't need any amateur assistance.) Xing Li's site does not archive stories based on their works. The genre is distinct, Xing Li says, because stories are written for predefined worlds and audiences. "Even that aspect has been stretched," he says, "as writers create brand new worlds with only small details tied to the original world."

Here is a short story -- bad punctuation and spelling included -- based on the mindless computer game Minesweeper:

-The Tale of Joe - By Nazi Janitor One day, Joe Schmo, decided to quit his job of being a taco salesman. But, he had no idea what to be. Then he saw an ad in the paper: "DUDE BECOME A MINESWEEPER AND SWEEP MINES. NOTE: YOU MIGHT DIE BUT WHO CARES?!?!?!?!".

"Hyuck hyuck hyuck, this is thuh kinda job I'm looking for, hyuck." Joe said to himself.

Joe was hired. But sadly, he was killed buy a mine because he selected the wrong box. And because he was a smiley, his eyes turned into X's and his face exploded because he sucks at life. The End.