In case you missed this meme, it’s great fun. I Write Like is a website that lets you paste in an excerpt of your writing, and uses an algorithm to tell you which author’s writing yours most resembles. It’s fascinating stuff. Who doesn’t want to be told they write like David Foster Wallace or Kurt Vonnegut? Although some folks are mighty disappointed to learn that their choice of words mostly closely mirrored those of Stephanie Meyer and Dan Brown. And, imagine Margaret Atwood’s surprise when she pasted in a sample of her own writing, only to find she writes like… Stephen King. Interestingly, I plugged in a few excerpts from my “I get paid to write this” copy, and turned up H.P. Lovecraft. When I used a few random posts from this blog, it spit out Douglas Adams. Nice to know I’m part of the society of weird fiction writers. I couldn’t be happier. Just for kicks, I analyzed the lyrics to the Banana Splits theme song. Apparently, Cory Doctorow—science fiction author, activist, journalist and blogger—could have written this gem!
I like the fact that I write like David Foster Wallace, I don’t like that he committed suicide at roughly my own age…
🙁
–scott
You’re not going to believe this but I popped in some recent newletter copy I’ve written and I came up as H.P. Lovecraft too…which really means I write like Holly Gonzalez…