Initial Ideas

Spider diagrams are perhaps one of the most efficient ways to demonstrate a series of thoughts that aren't easily confined to lists. Thusly, my first action was to do a broad, undefined spider diagram of things that interested me, including such useless tidbits as 'holidays' and 'cats'. There was information worth salvaging and refining into my initial ideas, all of which are closely related to literature and creative writing; the latter of which I vastly enjoy as a hobby but don't contend with at college.

I used website bubbl.us to create the spider-diagram, as hastily scanning up the copy from my notepad is, frankly, a fruitless endeavour.

On  the essay spectrum, I listed various authors and poets associated both with Gothic Literature and Romanticism, both of which I have a keen interest in (the latter of which was inspired by 'Higher Education Plus', of which one of the lectures introduced me to an era of writing I was somehow unaware of previously) which can be a useful for finding their works. It does bring me interest that there is a crossover with Shelley (who wrote the genre-defining Frankenstein). Furthermore, Medieval Literature features three texts I'm somewhat familiar with: Beowulf (the Anglo-Saxon epic I sorely need to finish reading), L'Morte d'Arthur (recalled from another HE+ session, that I was interested in pursuing), and The Owl and the Nightingale (a poem of an unknown author which I chanced upon). However, I feel significantly less confident with Medieval Literature than the other two in terms of essays, as it is the one I have the least familiarity with.


There was a strong focus on 'Creative Writing' in the artifact section of the spider diagram as this is a hobby of mine I'm determined to develop. Poetry has the greatest variety to it, as my curiousity and experimentation with the writing form is recent but enjoyable. Conversely, I have far less favour for the others as I can imagine by motivation waning, especially with a task such as a Novella.


I'm already aware of some of the biases within my ideas, so I should begin to narrow down the possibilities and begin planning to pitch the ideas to my fellow classmates.