My Inner Author.

I just finished reading a writing reference book called You Can Write a Novel by James V. Smith, Jr. and it is the single most useful book about writing that I have ever read. In case you are just as in love with writing as I am, I want to share this cool feature Word has that this book told me about. If you go to Word --> Options --> Proofing, there should be a category called "When correcting spelling and grammar in Word" and there will be an unchecked check box at the bottom of the list called "Show readability statistics." Click it, and click Okay. Then, while viewing your document, go to the "Review" tab and find "Spelling and Grammar." When you click that, it will check your writing for fragments and other annoying things, and at the end it will come up with a window with your readability stats. It will look something like this:

Got it? Cool. It's cool. If you check these stats for some bestselling books, you will see low numbers for all the averages and readability except the penultimate stat (that one's out of 100 and you want it to be high - aim for at least 80. I need to work on that one for this piece.). The last one is out of 12 and you want it to be below six, so mine's okay right there. 

Anyway, it's a great tool for all kinds of writing. I'm working on my essay for the Common Application and it looks like this:

Eek. Lots of work to be done. :) So what do you do to get better stats? Short words, short sentences, and short paragraphs. That should help. Try it and see if your stats improve. If they don't... then read You Can Write a Novel.

Look, here are the readability stats for this post! (Can you tell how much I love this feature?!?)

Anyway, yeah. :)

Ciao for now,

Sol

Long Time No Blog.

*Pfpwoooff*
*Blows metaphorical dust off of this old blog*

Hey y'all.
Life.
And colors! My newly discovered favorite blogging tool. :)
So... life.
I basically haven't been on this blog since the beginning of junior year, and now the year's almost over!! Crazy. So, AP exams are coming up... I believe we're all in APUSH? Good luck all :)
Guess what? In September of NEXT YEAR we will all be freshmen in COLLEGE.
COLLEGE.
Waah. In-SANE.
Umm, that's all I can think of to say right now. Anyway, KBO and be amazing!!!

Banana cream pie,
Sol

PS. MIRA! I totally forgot to wish you happy birthday on your birthday! Well, happy late birthday and happy being an "adult minus one" as one of my Maeser friends puts it :) or "one year til you can go to jail!" as another puts it. :) :) :) You're really the cat's meow!!