According to this I write YA stories

[twopoint]

I usequestails for her computer geniousness. 

After the Singapore Incident, I went a-searching for online document storage because emailing stories and notes to myself (and backing it all up on three separate flash drives, or posting it and locking it here) didn’t fully satisfy my ocd. I discovered some nicely recommended storage sites, but I’ve successfully locked myself down with anti-malware everything and the sites won’t allow me to upload without turning it off, which I cannot do because something might explode.

So I askedquestails and she put up with my ignorance magnanimously (as always) and said, why don’t you just use the document feature on gmail?

Oh.  

I’ve been playing with gmail docs for a couple weeks now and I love it love it love it. I love that I can email stories in and send draft links without attachments to whomever I want (the rest of you might not share in my ease of sharing). It’s clean text that keeps the style definitions so that I can copy and post without having to fiddle with font, unlike Word 07 which is of the devil, notepad takes too much out, etc.  

Curious about word count last night, I searched around to see if there was any difference between Word and gmail and discovered – my writing is easily understood by the average eleven year old and I typically write at the fourth grade level according to the Flesch-Kincaid Readability Tests. Occasionally, rarely, I step up to the fifth grade level. That puts me about even with Reader’s Digest and a little better than our local disaster of a newspaper. 

I’m sure Word offers the same information, but I never go deeper than the word count at the bottom of the screen. I know the tests don’t qualify as ratings, if it did, my fondness for a certain word that begins with f would push me at least into middle school (where I will eternally remain in heart and action). So, I’m going to be more polysyllabic this week. I’m going to keep tellingquestails that she’s magnanimous, because she is.  Andvictoriawiley, who writes shopping lists at the doctorate level, I’m going to tell her that she’s perspicacious, because that’s why I love her, and with her help I will use more semi-colons and develop complex sentence structures and I will finally understand the past perfect tense. I will try, and fail, to stop beginning sentences with And and But. 

So, using Flesch-Kincaid, who is your target audience?

Comments

[two-point.livejournal.com]

TEMPTATION!!! It's like Christmas, but better because it's not like Christmas. Thank you for sending me over there! Here's the chance to write Weiss as it should have been written the first time.

[ahpookishere.livejournal.com]

PS -




On the off chance, if there is a possibility, however miniscule.. can we maybe consider the option of co-writing a teeny weeny Soviet Russia art heist Schwarz thinger?

I know you're busy, and you have your originals to worry about, but alas. I thought I would overcome my shyness and ask.

[two-point.livejournal.com]

Nothing would make me happier! And you're the only writer I know that I would want to co-write anything with.

I will warn you that the reason I don't write for a living anymore is -- I have a tendency to write utter shit when pressed with a deadline. Also, I'm an only child so I have a tendency to wander off and be sullen when I'm writing utter shit. If you can live with these things, then I think we need to get started immediately.

It must not be tiny. It must be epic. Or epically tiny. What can we have them go after? Why do they need it? There must be a night train from St. Petersburg to Moscow. There must be eccentric oc's.

This is the most exciting thing ever!

[ahpookishere.livejournal.com]

I WANT TO GIVE YOU A COHERENT RESPONSE BUT IM LIKE OMFG YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY.

Deadlines hurt, but at least we can be sullen together. XD I am ready to start when you are, but please be prepared to catch me, when I collapse under pressure. Oh my! I may get the vapors!

It's you. And, it's me. They need to acquire a certain icon, of course. Unless, you can think of some other wonderful object. And the OC's! Moody iconographers! Cynical Orthodox priests! The possibilities are endless.

You need to get on AIM. :-P

[two-point.livejournal.com]

We have ways of reviving you. And your vapors are making me laugh. I was trying to explain the vapors to the turk the other day because he is surrounded by far too many southern women, but apparently the vapors are still a very credible ailment in Turkey where many women still fan themselves while eating sliced fruit in the parlor after dinner.

There's going to be some serious icon lovin in the coming weeks.

I'm zehiragac on AIM.

[ahpookishere.livejournal.com]

I'm ganzfeldeffect.

I shall contact you shortly, with further information about the whereabouts of a certain Byzantine treasure. XD

[two-point.livejournal.com]

After a month of going back and forth on how necessary it was to be obvious in characterization I named a major player in my original story Ganzfield. I made this decision last week.

If I can keep channeling you, co-writing will be simple.

[ahpookishere.livejournal.com]

:-O Is he a snarky telepath? I must know more.If you have another one, you can name him Zener.

[two-point.livejournal.com]

Nope, not a telepath, but a blank slate, all sensory deprived. If I try to write an "original" snarky telepath - and I have tried really, really, hard - then someone, someone whose name might begin with S makes the story self destruct.

[ahpookishere.livejournal.com]

Ah, yes. I can see how that name is appropriate, then. XD

I KNOW!

Was in the middle of a long original thing, full of (artificial) telepaths, but the snark wouldn't come. This person named S blocked all transmission of snark. Instead, they're just all kind of maudlin and socially inept.