Summary of course taken

I am studying an MA in Creative Writing, part-time. The course allows 50% of the modules to be selected from the School of Humanities list; so I am following ‘creative’ and ‘academic’ pathways. The course is taught through seminars. Assessment is through coursework and a dissertation. I also work and have a family, and therefore have non-study demands to juggle alongside the MA.

Description of strategies used.

I can get tired quickly but this is variable, with good and bad times, and it can tip into fatigue. A laptop with internet access is essential for being able to work in bed as well as in various places in the house. I use the library for borrowing books, printed indexes and items on microfiche but most of the time I use online resources or buy my own books; then I can work more flexibly and don’t have to organise getting books back to the library. If I need to type in the library I use the ATS (Assistive Technology Service) where it tends to be quieter and the booths screen off the distraction of movement made by other people.

I use a combination of voice dictation software and typing onto a laptop to produce text. The voice dictation is for accuracy and speed. I don’t have full use of my left hand and my right hand can be clumsy. My handwriting is illegible. On top of that my spelling is dire so I need error correction on Word. However, dictation of text has subtle effects on writing style and content. There are times when I am too tired to dictate (but I can often type at those times), and tiredness affects the clarity of my speech. I use writing as a thinking tool, to shape my thoughts. If I am writing fiction or poetry, then I type. I dictated about 50% of one essay and the planning notes for two others, but otherwise I have typed because I find it is an essential part of getting to grips with ideas. The voice dictation is there if I need it.

I sometimes have problems with ‘word finding’. This can be very annoying and it affects my spoken and written language. Also I have a tendency to know that a word or phrase has more than one meaning but I am unsure about which one would be correct for context. I use dictionary.com as definition and thesaurus tools and ‘define’ on Google.

Structuring written work and keeping on topic is something I need to work at because I have no sense of an ending – everything is in flow and has infinite connections. I have mind mapping packages, Inspiration and MindManager, but I don’t find them useful for academic work. I used Inspiration to write poetry. PowerPoint I have found good for planning and visualising information – for example, I write the key points and the use the sorting tool to get some sense of structure. If I cannot think of the words, I find images through a Google search, put them onto slides and come back to them later. I use simple tables in Word to create series of key points with text or references in the adjacent box. For my last essay I created a blog with the intention of having a framework of 20 x 250 words. In fact I did more like 10 x 500 but it stopped me from going too far off on a tangent on each entry; I used tags to keep the content within about 10 main tags. I linked to some film, images and websites (I submitted a printed version of the entries and that was at the set word limit, and a link to the blog).

I can skim read but my reading accuracy is weak. The first thing I had to do was use text-reading software over some poetry, just to slow myself down. Text-reading software is atonal, finding recordings of people reading is a much better option, but in this case it had the desired effect of making me pay attention to every word. I sometimes use the ‘snapshot tool’ or ‘snipping tool’ to take screenshots from files that are an image rather than text my text-reading package (TextHelp Gold) will make a reasonable go at 19th and 20th c documents that have good quality typeface.

The snipping tool is excellent for making quick notes that have a visual quality rather than just a list. I have tried using the on-line bookmarking tool ‘delicious’ but am so in the habit of using ‘favourites’ that it remains the top dumping ground for links in totally unorganised lists on several computers. I regularly use a desktop and laptop at the same time so I can view a primary document and the page I am writing; and that leads back to the laptop again as a number on essential study tool.