* * * * * How did I miss this? > It's November and aspiring writers are plugging away at their novels for > National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo, an annual event that encourages > people to churn out a 50,000-word book on deadline. But a hundred or so > people are taking a very different approach to the challenge, writing > computer programs that will write their texts for them. It's called > NaNoGenMo, for National Novel Generation Month, and the results are a > strange, often funny look at what automatic text generation can do. > Via Hacker News [1], “The strange world of computer-generated novels | The Verge [2]” National Novel Generation Month [3]? No one told me about this! I did not receive the memo [4]! Why was I not informed of this earlier? I've att empted to do NaNoWriMo multiple times [5] but I could never finish a novel, no matter how many times I attempted it. But this? Write a computer program to do the dull boring bit of writing 50,000 words? That sounds more fun. Okay, “fun” being a relative word here. I've looked at some of the results and some of them are fantastic! Ten years ago I threatened to write a novel with 50,000 fictional words [6] but this year—Liza Daly [7] has done what I threatened and wrote a book with 50,000 fictional words [8]—using potentially fictional alphabet [9] to push it to 11. Most of the submissions appear to be written using Markov chains [10] (an algorithm that uses probability of word A to follow word(s) B to generate the text) and while it can produce some spellbinding wordsmithery—a story with the fascinating title of “The Case Of The IT. And Now I'll Be Too Late With A Murder Done On My Own Doorstep. Volume: 8” is a prime example, you have to read through a lot of dull and nonsensical prose [11] to find the gems. A better technique might be a more template driven system, such as the one used to generate _The Policeman's Beard Is Half Constructed_ [12]: > At all events my own essays and dissertations about love and its endless > pain and perpetual pleasure will be known and understood by all of you who > read this and talk or sing or chant about it to your worried friends or > nervous enemies. Love is the question and the subject of this essay. We > will commence with a question: does steak love lettuce? This quesion is > implacably hard and inevitably difficult to answer. Here is a question: > does an electron love a proton, or does it love a neutron? Here is a > question: does a man love a woman or, to be specific and to be precise, > does Bill love Diane? The interesting and critical response to this > question is: no! He is obsessed and infatuated with her. He is loony and > crazy about her. That is not the love of steak and lettuce, of electron and > proton and neutron. This dissertation will show that the love of a man and > a woman is not the love of steak and lettuce. Love is interesting to me and > fascinating to you but it is painful to Bill and Diane. That is love! > But that requires quite a bit of work to write the templates that help to generate the text: > Key: > > (redundancies explicitly added by Chamberlain, by repeating a text- > variable type, apparently for camouflage) > > my own (essays) about love and its (endless) pain and > pleasure will be (understood) by all of you who read this and (talk) about > it to your ( ). Love is the (subject) of this . We > will with a question: does love ? This quesion is > ( ) to answer. (Here is a question: does a man love a > woman or, (to be specific), does love ?) The (interesting) > response to this question is: no! (He is (infatuated) with her.) That is > not the love (of and ). This will show that the > love of a man and a woman is not the love of and . Love > is (interesting) to me and you but it is painful to and . That > is love! > “Racter FAQ - Google Groups [13]” (Racter being the program that “wrote” _The Policeman's Beard Is Half Constructed_ [14]) But it's still November. I have 2½ days to write a quick program and get my NaNoGenMo done! Hmm … perhaps I could hook Racter [15] up to ELIZA [16] … > > eliza: Hello. Please state your problem. > > racter: Excellent! Excuse me a minute while I attend to some business. I > will be right back. > > eliza: Why do you need to tell me excuse while you attend to some > business? > > racter: Is it better to need or to despise? Why is it that I do need to > tell you to excuse myself to attend to some business? Because > electrons are brave. Braveness is nice, don't you think? And the > needers all insist upon it. Do you imagine I am a Communist? > “colorful personalities [17]” Hmm … have to think on this … [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8663851 [2] http://www.theverge.com/2014/11/25/7276157/nanogenmo- [3] https://github.com/dariusk/NaNoGenMo [4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8bchnLOT7ic [5] https://www.google.com/search?q=nanowrimo+site%3Aboston.conman.org [6] gopher://gopher.conman.org/0Phlog:2004/11/01.1 [7] https://blog.safaribooksonline.com/author/lizadaly/ [8] https://blog.safaribooksonline.com/2014/11/08/nanogenmo2014- [9] http://openfontlibrary.org/en/font/voynich [10] http://blog.codinghorror.com/markov-and-you/ [11] http://coleww.github.io/its_existentialist_my_dear_watson/the_case_of_t [12] https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B000EK8SCS/conmanlaborat-20 [13] https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/rec.arts.int- [14] https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B000EK8SCS/conmanlaborat-20 [15] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racter [16] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ELIZA [17] http://web.stanford.edu/group/SHR/4-2/text/dialogues.html Email Sean Conner at sean@conman.org .