Sometimes it's great to just kick back, forget the creative deadlines you've imposed upon yourself like a cross between the Marquis de Sade and a desperate novelist, and just play with words. As I'm a visual learner (I read that in a book once), I was delighted to receive an email from fellow novelist Warren about a neat little cyber toy that also serves a practical purpose.
It's called a Wordle and not only does it give you a visual representation of your most used words in the form of a delightful "word cloud", but you can also play with the font, colours and layout. And it's free too - what's not to like? Here's the all-important link: http://www.wordle.net/
The wizardry is a not-for-profit device and you can use it on all kinds of neat stuff. As if that wasn't enough, you can use it on text, on blogs (see image above) and, as Warren ably demonstrated, on an entire novel.
What are you waiting for? Go play!
It's a great site. Really handy if you can't think of a good image for a blog post or something - or just procrastinating!
ReplyDeleteThere's also a writing-style use - if you want to know what words are overused in a poem or short story, they appear bigger.
Oooo, I love this, Derek! I like inspirational quotes and put in the following:
ReplyDelete'Your life is entirely what you decide it is. Change what happens in your head and your world changes.'
It looked great in Wordle:)