....H. P. Lovecraft, an American author (1890-1937) of horror, fantasy, and science fiction. How do I know this? Because I pasted a sample of my writing into the web site I Write Like and it statistically analyzed my choice of words and writing style and compared them to a data base of famous authors. I had never heard of H.P. Lovecraft but thought it quite the spooky coincidence given my obvious love of craft.
How reproducible was this result? I pasted in text from a second blog post and got the same answer. Then I pasted in the first three paragraphs of a science proposal I am writing and got the same answer again! (I'm not sure this bodes well for my science proposal.) At this point I'm really skeptical so I paste in three samples of my father's writing and get three different answers (dad, you write like Dan Brown, Cory Doctorow, and J.R.R. Tolkien---my conclusion, you have a unique writing style/voice). Then I tested my blurb about Morris from the sidebar.....H. P. Lovecraft, again! Clearly, all Lovecraft fans should be reading my blog.
Finally, given that Lovecraft was a fantasy writer, the fictional genre invented by William Morris (see post here), I wondered if there was a connection between the two, other than both of the authors being included in the well-known (to people like Tyrion Frost) Ballantine Adult Fantasy Series. All I could discover was that Lovecraft was heavily influenced by Lord Dunsany, who in turn was strongly influenced by Morris. My writing style thus appears to have three degrees of separation from the Great One!
p.s. after finishing this post, the analysis of it on I Write Like, again, was H. P. Lovecraft!
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