Have any of you ever been directly and immediately affected by exposure to
The Real Thing?  If so, was it something that stuck with you or was it a
kind of come and fade thing?  I'm curious to see what you all think of this.
A .4 increase based on 1/16th of the story seems pretty dramatic to me.

I think that we're all affected by reading anybody's writing--particularly
those authors that we like. In my case, it's been in a gradual change in the
style of my writing. It's more colloquial than it was before and slightly
more choppy because one of my favourite writers, Diane Schoemperlen, writes
like that.

As for your reading grade level and sentence per paragraph question? I don't
think it particularly matters. Reading grade level isn't a very accurate
portrayal of the complexity of your writing. 'Sentences per paragraph' is
also a rather misleading statistic. Jamaica Kincaid in one extreme case
wrote a sentence about half a page long! Suffice it to say that Kincaid is
not one of my favourite writers.

Regards,

DucThe Truong
DWC @ <http://welcome.to/dwc>
Thinkin' Different