I write like John Irving, only better.

LOL, thanks for the tip, am enjoying the I Write Like site.

People are having so much fun with this that the site’s creator will be adding more authors and more examples from major authors. The one I’m waiting for is Bill Ayers so we can run Obama’s autobiographies through it.

Also, I figured I hit the jackpot with Mark Twain so I scooped up my winnings and shot out the door. After all, what would be better? Well, you have made it better! I figure NOW that I write like Mark Twain AND Shakespeare.

How do you feel about the writers with styles like yours?

Cynthia

On the other hand, I pasted entries of my private journal and it turns out I write like Stephen King. Then I pasted another entry in and it compared me to Cory Doctorow of Boingboing dot net fame. Another entry compared me to Chuck “Fight Club” Palahniuk.

Trouble is, I was hoping that it’d say I wrote like Elmer Keith or Louis L’Amour, but, no. Someone I’d never heard of.

Oh well, it could have said I wrote like Jack O’Connor.

Cory Doctorow?? that sample was an old blog post, the 2007 post on the anniversary of 9/11. No, I don’t update my blog much.

Now, when I tossed in one paragraph from chapter 1 of my master’s thesis, I suddenly become H. P. Lovecraft. Well, given that getting that degree was rather Lovecraftian, I’m not going to gripe.

Now, let’s try the same thesis, now chapter 5 – results – and see…oh, hey, James Joyce. Ok, chapter 2 looks like…Edgar Allen Poe? as does chapter 3. Do I dare look at chapter 4? David Foster Wallace?

Now, when I submit the contents of this here comment, betwixt “Cory…Wallace?”, I suddenly become Stephen King??!!

Oy.

I do have memory problems — I meant Mark Twain’s Letters from the Earth, which was not published until 1962. C.S. Lewis’s The Screwtape Letters is based on a similar conceit, of the demon Screwtape writing letters to his nephew, but with the intention of promoting Christian faith, which Twain’s Letters from the Earth found lacking in various ways that are simultaneously wryly amusing and heartwrenchingly painful. I don’t think I ever finished reading The Screwtape Letters. I’ll have to resume giving books I mention my affiliate link to Amazon — if I had made that extra effort, I could have saved myself some embarrassment. Thanks for spotting that.

Cynthia