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[Enigmaster]

[UPDATE] Quirky Acuity - 29th Nov 05

[specterz]

Is she quoting Hannibal in that last sentence? Do they even have the A-team in Perplex City? Hmm...weirdness...
So yeah, we should continue as we are. Only someone should be editor... I don't think I'm online enough to be it, though...

[Centipede]

I'm a terrible writer, but I can generally spot typos and grammatical errors fairly well. Plus I'd love to be involved even though I can't write worth a damn.

Are we going to be putting any secret messages in this? If so I think the editors should be the ones to actually do it. They'll be collating the whole thing so there's less chance of mistakes happening to ruin the messages. Also less chance that they would inadvertently remove part of the message.

[sledgecallier]

I'll do it if no-one else has any objections or burning desires to take the lead? (Actually, it may be better if there is more than one editor to spread the workload and help get everything sorted by the 21st.)

We'll need to organise a proper theme too to link the stories together into a more coherent whole. I like the idea of 'Games' but as there will be more then one author we should probably come to some sort of agreement ASAP.

[specterz]

Well... seeing how fast this collaborative story is going, we might just make that into the whole book. Keep going till we hit 50000 words, then make an ending!
The plot is certainly thickening at the moment...

[sledgecallier]

Either that, or we make the collaborative story the main chunk of the book but include a selection of short stories, essays and poems as well to give anyone who wants to contribute something specific a chance to do so?

[Scott]

[sledgecallier]

Ok, lets get the ball rolling. Centipede and myself will act as editors. As a genral rule all submissions will be included and editorial will be limited to correction of spelling and basic grammer. We'll contact authors individually if we fear there is anything more serious needed.

We'll shortly set up an email address so that stories can be submitted but if anyone wants to author a piece then can they post here with details of who they are, and roughly what it is they are wanting to write about. This will allow us to judge the number of stories we will be dealing with and to ensure we don't get multiple submissions on the same subjects. (Although if you want to collaborate between yourselves then this will be fine.)

Thanks

[Scott]

well, It seems to me the wiki is a slightly better place to work fFrom .. That is, after all, what a wiki is fFor. In this way we can all see what is being worked on. Let's keep it collaborative, shall we.

[perplexed]

I may post one or two essays of about 1500 words each comparing elements of perplexian and earth culture, history and other topics. The subjects may change but the length and format will not.

Also, i think it would be good for the editors to agree on a standard formatting not only of text but of files, which sounds obvious, but could prove a mamouth task to edit especially if someone is running Word and gets lots of Linux file formats(although the same is not true in reverse, damn Microsoft and their incompatibility!!!).

[Mikeyj]

I'm sure those with Linux will oblige their unenlightened compadres with docs produced by the Fairtrade OOo Writer!

Sorry that was unnecessarily smug.

Is there going to be an earlier deadline by which the editors need to have received submissions so that you can sort out our tpyos?

[Centipede]

The only problem I see with the Wiki is figuring out which of us is editing what. It would also be easier to be able to print out and markup a hard copy, I think that would be easier through e-mail as well.

Of course the Wiki would solve the problem of differing file formats., unless we all just use plain text. That's universal, right? A text document written on a Mac can be opened on a Windows box and vice-versa?

[sledgecallier]

There's nothing stopping us attacking this from two fronts. Anyone who wants to post a story to the Wiki for public approval, editing etc should feel free to do so and we'll take them from there. However if you do not want to post in such a public forum then please feel free to send you stories to tales.from.earthsplatgmail.com.

I'm guessing all stories should be submitted in a plain text format for ease of conversion. I'll e-mail Violet and see what format she want's the final product to be in. There's no point going the whole hog and piping everything into Quark and doing a full production job on it if they cannot use this at the publishers.

[Centipede]

Just for kicks, maybe we should convert the whole thing into ascii codes, or binary.

[sledgecallier]