Fun with Wordle

Howdy, y'all!

So, if you don't know what Wordle is, let me briefly explain how it works. It's a nifty little website, where you can enter a bunch of text, and then it creates a "word collage" based on what you enter. The more frequently you use a certain word, the bigger it is in the collage. Fun, right?

But not only is it fun, it's also a useful tool for writers––because it shows you what words you might be using too much.

For example, here's what happened when I entered the entirety of my book UNRAVELING:

Uh wow, the word "like" is freakin' HUGE! Same with the word "know" ... and there are a lot of other words that are relatively large. 

Now, this is what happened when I entered six of my books at once:

The results are actually pretty much the same. Looks like no matter what I'm writing, I use a lot of the same words. Particularly "like" and "know," for some reason.

Well, I take this as a sign that I should go back through my manuscripts and take out some of those words that I'm using way too much. 

So, my question of the day is: What are some words that you use too much? Have you ever used Wordle to find out––and if so, did the results surprise you?

Collage Brainstorms

Hey guys. This post is going to be very short and sweet because I'm a busy gal and I need to get back to NaNo-ing. (Or whatever the word is. The point is, I'm working on my NaNo at the moment and I'm trying to reach the magical 50k mark today. And I still have quite a bit to go. So ... wish me luck!)

This is a fun idea I got from my friend Ally's blog, NOVEL IDEAS (which is a fabulous blog, by the way, and you should all read it). She probably explains it better than I do, but the basic idea is that you search around on the Internet for pictures that represent ideas/places/characters/etc. in your story. I tried it out and found it quite fun and motivational. I've always found images to be inspiring, so I think this is a tool that could really help me in the future. (I already make book covers for my own stories, so this is kind of similar to that.)

So, here it is! My first collage brainstorm. It's for Sweet Sorrow, my NaNo novel. :)

(You can click on it to make it bigger.)

I found photos on deviantArt (so, they're not my photos!) and edited the collage using Picasa. (Picasa is a free photo editing program on Google, and it has a cool collage-making tool.)

So, what do y'all think? Is this an activity you think would be helpful? If anyone else makes collages, I'd love to see them! :)