A neat little web application

I found this little application on 2 occasions. One time reading an interesting blog here - Liberality, and another time just this morning over at The Good Life. I enjoy reading both blogs. What I came across was the "I Write Like" writing analyzer.

I kinda wanted to do a little experiment with my writing. Even though it says quite suggestively that "Check which famous writer you write like with this statistical analysis tool, which analyzes your word choice and writing style and compares them with those of the famous writers." Neither you or I can determine exactly how this little application garner's it's information (maybe you can, but I'm not all that technology adept), how was it coded to figure out our individual writing styles?


Does it pick up individual words in the post & attribute them in a broad spectrum of words used by those famous authors? Does it calculate a section of text & compare it to a snippet of a novel? Does it take the whole piece & compare it to different famous stories? Is it a fun little do-hickey? Yes. Do I conform to it's believability? Nope, well, maybe not at first.

How cool is to to be compared to great writers in history? It's awesome! & as I enter different posts into the neat-o analyzer, I am always surprised & excited when I get the result. Cause it's FUN! Wouldn't it be cool if it were truth? I really wish I felt like it could be. I just don't know if it's consistent enough to believe, nor do I know if my writing style varies so much that it would trigger so many different outcomes. Okay, the latter is probably correct. I know I don't write consistently the same.

Here are some of my results from non-everyday blogging:

This post (not for the faint of heart or easily creeped out) won me H.P Lovecraft. I love it!

This post won me Ray Bradbury!! Awesomesauce!

This poem won me Vladimir Nabokov. Really?! Cool!

This post won me David Foster Wallace (who?).

This one...wait for it... J.D. Salinger! Wooo hooo! So cool!

This one, my personal favorite, Stephen King. Yesssss!

You know reading this, you may think I'm being sarcastic, but I'm so NOT! I am very excited that some of my writing may actually be compared to some of these great writers! I'm stoked! As I begin to go further into this little experiment, it seems I do have some consistency to speak of.

Finally, this post has me writing like a female writer. Margaret Mitchell.

And, oh my, YES! This post has my writing similar to that of Anne Rice!! I've read lots Anne Rice, I don't think I have the same dedication to prose as she does.

To further this experiment, I went ahead & broke down one post, paragraph by paragraph. Interesting results. The post as a whole compares my writing to Jonathan Swift. The first paragraph, Mark Twain; the second, Cory Doctorow; the third, James Joyce; the fourth, Stephen King; finally, the last one, Ursula K. Le Guin.

I analyzed some writing from a group I used to participate in & one of my shorts had my writing compared to Gertrude Stein, one compared me to Margaret Atwood, Arthur Clarke for another, a poem I wrote compared it to Charles Dickens...wow! This piece, which I began to write thinking I may write an actual novel, well, it got me another reference to Stephen King.

Overall, I write the most like Cory Doctorow (who was born the same year I was) and often like Chuck Palahniuk (who wrote the novel Fight Club - & that's just awesome!). Neither of whom I'd heard of until I used the application. I had fun with the experiment. If you choose to try, post it & comment here (or just put something in your title & if you're in my blog list, I will see it) and I will swing on over & check it out. Whatever the outcome, I know it makes for interesting conversation.