365 Days Till Christmas

"I will honor Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year."

 - Ebenezer Scrooge, Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol

I've heard those words, or some slight variation of them, at least seven times this Christmas season.

Yes, I admit it: I'm a "Christmas Carol" junkie. My husband and I own an embarrassing number of versions of it on DVD, and every year, we try to fit in as many as we can. We love comparing the merits of each version, debating which is the best retelling of the story, who makes the best Scrooge, which actor is the best Marley, etc.

There's a reason the story is so addictive and so re-watchable. As many times as I've seen it, I always come away a bit inspired, vowing to apply more of the lessons it teaches to my own life.

"I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come round  -- apart from the veneration due to its sacred name and origin, if anything belonging to it can be apart from that -- as a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time; the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely...."

- Scrooge's nephew Fred 

It's a stirring message. It's also a tough one to live up to, once you get up off the couch and get back to the pressures of the holiday season, or of everyday living. Tough -- but then, that's the case with most things that are worth doing. 

This year, I've decided it's at the top of my list of New Year's resolutions.

COMPUTERS CAN'T READ

I saw an article recently about a popular new Web site, "I Write Like." It offers to analyze samples of your writing and tell you what famous author you sound like.

I thought it sounded fun, and ran for some sample text from my work in progress.

My husband, on the other hand, snorted. "Type in some Charles Dickens and see what it says."

I did. I copied-and-pasted a couple of different sections from an online version of A Christmas Carol. It came up with James Joyce once, and Stephen King twice. But no Dickens.

Then I tried a few samples of my own work. Based on samples taken from the same chapter of my current book, it thinks I write like David Foster Wallace, Kurt Vonnegut ... or Stephen King.

I took a closer look at the article, by AP entertainment writer Jake Coyle. Turns out the site was set up by a Russian software programmer named Dmitry Chestnykh. English isn't his first language, and he created the program using three complete books by about 50 authors for comparison. (I'm not sure if Dickens made it or not.)

It sounds like Mr. Chestnykh worked pretty hard on it, poor guy, but there are obviously a few bugs in the system.

Here's the biggest bug: Computers can't read.

No matter how much programmers teach them about types of words, grammar and sentence structure, a computer can't tell what we mean.

In my critique group, we've had some fun lately looking at what Microsoft Word's analysis has to say about our writing. It rates our work in terms of grade level, what percentage of passive voice we use, and "readability." (We're still trying to figure out what "readability" means.)

I'm a big fan of sentence fragments, contractions and sentences that start with words like "but" and "so." So, of course, grammar check has a fit. And Microsoft said my last chapter was written just below the fourth grade level.

OW!!!

Of course, I'm no Hemingway, but with his legendary simplicity, I'm not so sure he'd get a higher grade than me. I can take comfort in that.

Here's my point. Computers are wonderful tools, but they're just that -- tools. They're made to serve us, not the other way around. They may be able to help us snuff out some of that pesky passive voice – but the darn fools would never notice if your character drove his car into the garbage instead of the garage.

You know what you mean better than any software program can, so don't rush to "up" your grade level just because a computer says so. And don't rush to channel your inner Stephen King just because a Web site says you sound more like Dan Brown. (You shouldn't be trying to sound like anyone else anyway. Right?)

Do what no computer can do. Read your work. Listen to your words. Decide if they say what you want them to say.

But for kicks and giggles, you can check out "I Write Like" here.