Playing with (and learning from) Wordle

Wordle is this neat site where you can create a word cloud from whatever text you want. You just copy, paste, and click go. You can edit the font, the colors, the orientation of the words, and the number of words. It's a great way to literally take a snapshot of your story and see what words you used most frequently. With this you can see what was emphasized and maybe spot some problems too.

I've plugged five books into Wordle to see the results. This is my very first (unpublished) novel Page of Wands:

You can definitely tell the names of the main characters. There are too many filler words present: like, just, around, something, back, thought. Seeing school, mother, and father point to it being Young Adult. Seeing ears and hair make me laugh because I know why those words were used so much. It's interesting to see this representation of a book I wrote that will never be published and that I haven't re-read in quite some time.

Here's Bring on the Night:

Again with the prominent character names, which I expect would be normal for any book. Like and know are the problem children here, though I do enjoy seeing fangs and shotgun together.

Mojo Queen:

With this one being in first person, Roxie's name is very small. I see some things that do give away something about the story: aura, energy, magic, demon, glasses. Blake is in giant letters, ha. And then there's like, grr.

Red House:

Once again Blake is in giant letters, though it looks like Daniel is larger this time (meaning it was used more). New character Shelby must have been around quite a bit. And damn it, there's like again.

The Key of Darkness (this is volume one of my web serial):

This is in third person so main character Eve's name is used a lot. And Pete! Who stole the role of hero right out from under Knox, the poor guy. Chet is also prominent. I'm just proud the top three characters are more pronounced than the word like.

From these snapshots I can tell that characters are king in my stories, and I have a problem with the word like. Better work on that.

Wordle is pretty fun to play with and I plan to use it from now on with all my stories, of whatever length. You can save the image by whatever method you use to take a screencap. I use the snipping tool, which is found in the start menu under accessories.

Tribute to a beautiful woman

I have lost a wonderful woman.

The world may not know her name and no one would think of her as important, but I do. For so long this woman was my rock, my cheerleader, my confidant, and my biggest supporter. She heard my voice when no one else did and encouraged me to speak up.

She taught me that I don’t need a huge platform to be heard. I just need to speak what’s on my mind and in my heart and eventually, someone, the right person, would hear me. This applied to my writing. When I was struggling to put words to paper, to deal with the rejection letters flooding my inbox, she was the one that encouraged me to keep at it.

When my first book came out, she was in my acknowledgements. Though that was a way of saying thanks, I feel I have not done enough to thank her. I can never do enough.

Now that she’s gone, I am determined to honor her memory, much as I honored her in life. I shall continue writing, because if I don’t, she might just rise from the grave and slap the mess out of me. I will continue to do good for others, because she has always felt that there is nothing so nearer to heaven than to help others. She used to say it didn’t matter how you worshiped or if you worshiped at all, all that mattered was what you did to be a good person and that you did it from your heart, not expecting praise.

My great aunt was a strong woman who was self-reliant, caring, kind, loving and giving. She instilled these qualities in me and every day I continue to remind myself of the type of person I want to be. Though I am a work in progress and not perfect, she taught me to never expect perfection. The only way to gain perfection is to be dead. Part of the fun of life is being a constant work in progress.

In honor of her, I'm posting the below video. She used to love to listen to Elvis's spirituals. Said it did things for her soul. So Auntie, this is for you:

Rules for Writing

The other day while surfing the net, I found this interesting article from the U.K's Guardian online.


Some of the highlights:

• "Take a pencil to write with on aeroplanes. Pens leak. But if the pencil breaks, you can't sharpen it on the plane, because you can't take knives with you. Therefore: take two pencils."--Margaret Atwood
• "Take something to write on. Paper is good. In a pinch, pieces of wood or your arm will do."--Margaret Atwood
• "You can never read your own book with the innocent anticipation that comes with that first delicious page of a new book, because you wrote the thing. You've been backstage. You've seen how the rabbits were smuggled into the hat. Therefore ask a reading friend or two to look at it before you give it to anyone in the publishing business. This friend should not be someone with whom you have a ­romantic relationship, unless you want to break up."--Margaret Atwood
• "Do keep a thesaurus, but in the shed at the back of the garden or behind the fridge, somewhere that demands travel or effort. Chances are the words that come into your head will do fine, eg "horse", "ran", "said"."--Roddy Doyle
• "If you use a computer, constantly refine and expand your autocorrect settings. The only reason I stay loyal to my piece-of-shit computer is that I have invested so much ingenuity into building one of the great auto­correct files in literary history. Perfectly formed and spelt words emerge from a few brief keystrokes: "Niet" becomes "Nietzsche", "phoy" becomes ­"photography" and so on. ­Genius!"--Geoff Dyer

You'll need to read the article for more.