It's possible to argue, I suppose, that I have no standards, but I have begun one potentially useful practice: I have vowed to read at least two new -- as in "just posted within the last few hours or so" -- stories every day, assuming I have time, and so long as the creek doesn't rise and the workweek stays under 50 hours, I expect to have time.

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When I transitioned from mere reader to actual typer -- I think "writer" is still somewhere off in the distance -- I speculated that I might get twenty-five or so story reads, based on the idea that, hey, it's a first story, how good could it be?

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Yes, every now and then I appear to be, um, talking through my flank, so to speak. (This was a problem with the narrator in The Sparkle Chronicles, whose mouth was occasionally more agile than his brain. We have a few other things in common, but we need not go into that here.)

Anyway, if I have grievously, or simply egregiously, misread your intentions, or anything at all, this is the all-purpose Blanket Apology. Please refer to it whenever you deem it necessary.

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Member Unahim posted this as a comment to a featured story, and for some reason it alone, out of 150 or so comments on that story, caught my eye. Here's what was said:

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In crime-fiction parlance, a "second-story man" is a burglar who enters the premises through an upstairs window. It has nothing whatever to do with the poor shlub who, having expended the entirety of his emotional capital on a single tale, nonetheless is fool enough to try another one.

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The subject here, at least at one level, is a story called Grief by LunaUsesCaps. If you haven't read it, please do. I can wait.

I left a comment to this effect: "At some level I wasn't sure I had, this scares me. If your next question is 'Was this story effective?' the answer is 'More than you probably imagined'."

And then I went back and read it a second time, thinking I might have overreacted earlier.

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I got the impression that not everypony was happy with the Google-ization of the search box. I admit to a love/hate relationship with Google: I'm happy to get access to their results, and for that matter to be included in their results, but now and again they want to remind you who's boss, and it's not you. (They once banished me for not having taken what they considered sufficient measures to ward off intruders; getting back into their good graces was a chore.)

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In the order in which they came to mind, which reflects nothing other than my state of mind:

(1) Expertise in 400- to 800-word essays (and I'm not saying I have that) does not necessarily make one capable of an 18,500 word novella.

(1a) Seriously. The only rigid definition for "novella" I know of comes from the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America; to be eligible for a Nebula Award in the Novella class, a story must fall between 17,500 and 40,000 words.

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As is often the case, a full-fledged discussion broke out in the comment section of a story (specifically, this story). Said a reader: "Is the My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic television show the only thing he has to live for? Why do I keep seeing this kind of thing in stories?"

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I am becoming persuaded that every editor in existence counts them differently. Google is full of people who have found discrepancies between how many words they think they wrote and how many words Microsoft Word thinks they wrote.

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