Friday, January 28, 2011

So you want to be a writer

 


I love how one thing leads to another.  In this case, when I was working on an idea for a new painting, and the path of inspiration lead in many different directions.  

I looked up images on Nabakov and wound up on a writer’s blog who had posted about taking an online quiz to see whose writing style his resembled.  His writing resembled Nabakov’s according to the quiz.  I didn’t necessarily pick up on that but got lost on his blog reading for quite some time.  I love when I stumble upon great living writers because a lot of the time, I think that all the great writers are dead. The link to this writer is here in case you are interested in great writing! 
mrwriteon

Then of course I had to take the test to see whose writing mine resembled.  In order not to “sway” the results, I just copied and pasted things I had written from my own blog.  I immediately noticed what an incredibly lazy writer I am and how usually I rely only on images so I will make a conscious effort  try to also express myself in words.    I am never satisfied with just one answer though so I copied and pasted 4 of my blogs posts to the site and got 3 different results:
Kurt Vonnegut

H P Lovecraft


David Foster Wallace (twice)

Okay, I’ve read Slaughterhouse 5 a long time ago, and remember liking it a lot.  I have read a fair amount of David Foster Wallace’s work and relate to a lot of his ideas.   I have never read anything by H P Lovecraft so I had to look him up.   I can’t say it any better than this “Lovecraft's guiding literary principle was what he termed "cosmicism" or "cosmic horror", the idea that life is incomprehensible to human minds and that the universe is fundamentally alien. Those who genuinely reason, like his protagonists, gamble with sanity.”  (quoted from here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H._P._Lovecraft).  
Wow, that has me intrigued!

Now I’m wondering, why does everything I write resemble male authors?  I believe I actually read female authors more frequently than male ones.   You can take the test here http://iwl.me/

I would love to hear back from others about your results!  Feel free to post who YOU write like here!

10 comments:

Lisa said...

Another toy - site that says it can determine your gender via your writing.

http://bookblog.net/gender/genie.php

Apparently I also write like a boy.

Anonymous said...

I did 4 different blog posts too and here's what I got -James Joyce, Stephen King and David Foster Wallace (twice)...I felt like a real heavy hitter getting James Joyce;)

vivienne strauss said...

thank you for commenting Lisa & Barbara! Starting to wonder if they even have female authors programmed in the test.

I just took the gender quiz twice, once I was female, the second time male.

sMacThoughts said...

How cool.... ok, I do not consider myself a writer, but I snagged some text from my blog, and from captions on Flickr. Here's what I got:
Cory Doctorow
David Foster Wallace
Margaret Mitchell (GWTW)

Unknown said...

not satisfied with 4 attempts, i went for 5 and got margaret atwood, neil gaiman, jd salinger and... david foster wallace (twice). how fun! thanks for the link :)

vivienne strauss said...

Well, I'm so glad someone finally got a female author! Thank you for stopping by and playing the game SMac Thoughts!

vivienne strauss said...

San that is so funny you got Wallace too! I'm jealous of your Atwood & Salinger likeness, two of my all time favorites!

artslice said...

This was really fun... I got James Joyce. Great like, Vivienne :)
~Brenda

artslice said...

Oops, that was supposed to say 'great post, Vivienne'! :)

happy sunday,
Brenda

Elizabeth said...

That is the most fun! I took it many times using clips from my book blog. Mostly, I ended up writing like either Margaret Mitchell or Jane Austen (cool) but there were a couple modern ones and one man so perhaps it depended on my mood on the day I wrote the post? Going to do it again (I'm sure)and share with others. So fun, thanks!