every picture tells a story...

...don't it?

the folks over at wordle have come up with just what writers need - a new online distraction to help us procrastinate writing!

actually, i think this particular diversion has been around for awhile, but i've only just discovered what a time suck it can be.

here's how it works: you paste a large amount of text into a box, and wordle will create a collage of the most common words, showing you which ones feature most prominently in your manuscript (or blog or whatever you choose).

Here's my wordle for my WIP, Billy D. and the Bully:

(click to enlarge)

it's a fun toy, obviously, but it's also educational. notice two of the most prominent words in my jumble are "just" and "like." the same was true when i created a wordle for Butter.

i guess i just, like, can't help myself, y'know?

so you can use this as a tool to see which words you might be over-using, then do a search and destroy in your MS. or you can use it as a guide for which themes or characters are emerging in a significant way.

(i mean, whatever you have to tell yourself to rationalize the time wasted playing around on the site. that's what i'm doing. rationalization is my friend.)

now excuse me, i have to go wordle this blog post...