Saturday, January 24, 2009

Another Pleasant Way to Waste Time

Amy posted a link for wordle.net, a site that created word clouds with any text you paste into the box. The size of the words vary based on their frequency within the text. Needless to say, I had fun with it.

Here's Chapter 8 from The Other Side:


And the conclusion:


I did discover a practical use - I pasted my synopsis and now I can see if the largest words reflect what I think are the most important things from the book. Now I'm no longer just procrastinating!


Because that was so much fun, I opened up my nano draft and tried that as well. Here's the opening chapter from Greg's perspective:


And a different chapter from Becca's point of view. She's a teenager so I think it reflects her fairly well (at least I hope so):




*****

My mom and sister arrive at 2pm today so I'm not sure how regular my posting will be next week. I'm hoping to write several posts and have them scheduled to post each morning, so if I don't reply to comments as often, I apologize.

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

I create paintings like this...with words. I have to check out the site to get more ideas!!!

Melanie Hooyenga said...

AC, that's so neat you make paintings like that. Very cool. :)

Anonymous said...

Did you mean Becca or Bella? This is such a neat way to 'visualize' you work. Now I want to write a poem and 'see' how it looks! Thanks for sharing!

Robin said...

That's very funny. I'm going to check out the site. "What will they think of next"?

Jen said...

Wow. That is super-cool! Thanks for posting that...how neat!

Have fun with your family...you know we'll be around. :)

Spy Scribbler said...

Have fun with your family! Wordle is cool, isn't it? :-)

I should play!

Anonymous said...

That *does* look like a lot of fun. Which means I'd better stay away from that site right now. :)

Lauren said...

Have fun with your family. And thanks for sharing that tool. What a neat way to visualize the frequency of words. It looks so pretty. I think I am going to make one for several different parts of my book out, print them out and use them as art for my writing corner.

Anonymous said...

That is so cool.
I really envy you guys with your ability to work with words.

I have no writing talent, heck I have a hard enough time just speaking correctly.