Week Two - My Sweet Spot Assignment

Okay, I have to admit I was a little intimidated by week two's lesson and assignment, mostly because it dealt exclusively with clustering / mind mapping and I had only ever used that during my time at university. However, I was pleasantly surprised to find all of the exercises VERY fun. My computer decided to (repeatedly) crash on me today, which made working nearly impossible. But it made time for some freewriting and clustering, which was awesome. I clustered for nearly 90 minutes on the topics Holly listed, and felt incredibly invigorated and alive! I had words, themes, characters, plot and other leads popping up left and right. I couldn't get one idea written and enclosed faster than the next one was pushing its way out. What a terrific feeling!

Now, as soon as I can figure out how to use some dang mapping software then I'll re-create my clustering results and post a copy of them on here. But no such luck today. My computer actually started crashing when I was trying to download the Cayra software all my classmates are raving about so I gave up on that for right this minute. I did see another student posted a link to a program you can use online but it looked a little clunky. I deal with enough clunky, learning curve required programs 9-5 for work. I'd like something a little more intuitive and user-friendly for my writing pursuits. Any suggestions?

What was one recurring item on my Sweet Spot map? No surprise here: snakes and chocolate. Yep, I hate and fear snakes, and I need, love, hate and am drawn to chocolate. I was a little shocked that dolls didn't show up anywhere because they're friggin' scary as hell. If you don't agree, watch an episode of The X-Files called "Chinga." *shivers* There's plenty more stories of terrifying dolls but I don't want to think about them right now, it'll be dark pretty soon.

Toodles!