I Write Like...

...everyone, apparently. Prompted by a link a friend posted on Facebook, I wound up at I Write Like, a website where you can paste some of your writing in a box, and they analyze what famous writer your writing style is most similar to. When I put in the text from Poetry, I got this...

I write like
H. P. Lovecraft

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

That was OK with me. When I put in the text from Dictionaries, Dime Bags, and Doxastic Attitudes, I got that I wrote like Stephen King. Blech. Beautiful got me David Foster Wallace, who I don't even know. Recidivism got me P.G. Wodehouse. Not really seeing any connection among these authors, and wondering if there was randomization going on, I put a couple of the posts back through, and all came back with the same result. A poem I wrote for creative writing last semester came back with James Joyce. My essay on H.D. from my poetry class last fall came back with Dan Brown (more blech.) And what the hell? I was dying to figure out how they came up with these verdicts.

In retrospect, I think the idea behind this website is completely wrong-headed. I came to this conclusion, sadly, after half an hour of playing on their website. But I think there are too many writers out there trying to be the next Stephen King or Dan Brown. Writers need to remember that the point is to find their own voice, not mimic someone else's.

That said, I'm also trying to think what else I could pop in the analyzer to see what comes out...