http://faerye.net/tag/essay Posts tagged with "essay" - Faerye Net 2009-01-03T00:46:15+00:00 Felicity Shoulders http://faerye.net/ http://faerye.net/post/my-thesis-as-a-cloud My thesis as a cloud 2009-01-03T00:46:15+00:00 2009-01-03T10:11:36+00:00 <p>My friend <a href="http://www.robertpeake.com/" target="links">Robert Peake</a>, a thoughtful poet gifted in procrastination, recently turned in his <span class="caps">MFA</span> thesis and made <a href="http://www.robertpeake.com/archives/432-Poetry-Versus-Prose-A-Visual-Experiment.html" target="links">word clouds</a> of his critical essay and creative thesis (collection of poems, in his case), which you can see on his blog. (Clouds show each word at a size proportional to its number of uses in the text. Wordle defaults to removing dead-common words like &#8216;and&#8217;, and uses the 150 most used words unless you specify differently.) Of course I jumped at the chance to be the next to perform this act of procrastinatory genius, and plugged my opus into <a href="http://www.wordle.net">Wordle</a>.</p> <p>Here is my nearly-complete story collection/complete creative thesis, <em>Sea Selves</em>, in cloud form:<br /> <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/faerye/3162711398/" title="Thesis Wordle by Eilonwy Anne, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3121/3162711398_b4d4463882.jpg" width="500" height="325" alt="Thesis Wordle" border="0"/></a></p> <p>I really liked the random font and other options Wordle chose, and the layout that came out first try, so this is exactly what Wordle pumped out, transformed only in color. I took all these shades from photos I&#8217;ve taken of the Pacific Ocean. (Pretentious? <em>Moi?</em>)</p> <p>Here is my critical essay, <em>Sea Change: Visions of the Ocean</em>, which I tweaked a little more:<br /> <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/faerye/3161877561/" title="Essay Wordle by Eilonwy Anne, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3084/3161877561_c77dba6c55.jpg" width="500" height="303" alt="Essay Wordle" border="0"/></a></p> <p>If for some reason you want to look closer at either, you can click through to the Flickr page and press the &#8216;all sizes&#8217; button right above the image. My word clouds look very different from Robert&#8217;s, which is to be expected. Not only is my thesis prose, but mine is themed. I hope someone with a non-themed short story thesis tries it next to compare! There are a few words I&#8217;m slightly surprised by on my thesis word cloud, others I&#8217;m glad came through so strongly, and some which were a matter of course. And it&#8217;s interesting to see the names of characters from very different stories and worlds nestle so promiscuously together.</p> <p>For fun, here is a wordle of <em>Sea Selves</em> with 1500 words rather than 150. I think it makes clear why 150 is the default:<br /> <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/faerye/3161934417/" title="Thesis Wordle with 1500 words. by Eilonwy Anne, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3260/3161934417_3b0604a036.jpg" width="500" height="282" alt="Thesis Wordle with 1500 words." border="0" /></a></p> <p>In short, I hope Robert has started a fashion. This was fun, and I hope to see other MFAers follow suit.</p>