Last week it was an early zoom session with Peter Thomas. It was one of our most practical zoom sessions we have had so far.
Peter is apart of the Learning Enhancement team (LET) at Middlesex. He is also apart of the library within that Peter is apart of the academic writing and language group.
Within the session we discussed 'free writing'
Peter mentioned that it is a way to generate ideas and keep the creative flow going.
Our first task was to write for 5 minutes in sentences and try not to stop writing. This was to help generate a flow of thoughts. If you did stop writing you are stopping the flow if you can't think of what to write Peter said it's okay to write 'I can't think of what to write'. I did write this a few times...
We had to read what we wrote after the 5 minutes... now I did struggle with this as I wanted to go back and read my sentence again, this did however interrupt the flow of writing.
Before beginning this task I was apprehensive about it. I didn't see how or why we could use this in our academic writing, but was willing to give it a go and see how I felt after.
The first topic was 'What is writing?'
Your answer could be personal to you, the links between technology and writing, your feelings etc.
After the 5 minutes ended you had to read through what you've written, highlight bits in the text that seem important in one way or another. Once we got to this stage I started to realise how this could be significant when it comes to academic writing. I was surprised at how much I had highlighted on my piece of my paper.
Then again had to choose one point that we highlighted in the text and then we had to do another 5 minutes of free writing on that topic but this time round Peter wanted us to start our paragraph 'What I mean by........is' Again highlight anything that was important or significant in any way.
I found this harder for some reason as the original point I had chosen to talk about there was only so much I could expand on before repeating what I have already said. I found that after this part of the session, reflecting Rhian also felt this way she also mentioned how fixated we can be on a certain point and instead of focusing on that point focus on the other points you made as they may still be valuable.
Once we repeated the whole process twice we then had to choose a sentence and put it into the chat, now I'm not gonna lie this made me rethink what I was going to put into the chat as I knew others would be reading my point. Took me a while before I could get my sentence in the chat.
Peter made a great point about how there is a sense of preconceived ideas around writing especially at University and the link between University and getting graded.
What I liked about the zoom session is that messiness and free roaming was encouraged throughout.
Towards the end of the session Peter briefly mentioned the free writing three step process:
GENERATE (Try not to worry about the reader) (Mind map/list ideas)
PAUSE - MADE A SELECTION (relationships/linking points)
PRESENTED (how it sounds)
In the end I found this useful as I never ever thought that I would ever use a skill like free writing and learning that's another way on jotting down thoughts.
Portia
xoxo
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