What an enjoyable writing workshop we had yesterday with Dr Shayani Bhattacharya! Every guest session is fun, and I keep realising that when a teacher plans a session, it is meticulous, detailed, excellent!
We discussed what we research, how we research and why we research, but then we went on to something that’s important to all of us as writers – how we share research findings. Sure, you’re fascinated by time travel and wormholes. You read everything you can about them. How can you get your readers to be interested in the same things? When Shayani stressed the idea of finding our unique voice, my heart gave a little leap. It’s so useful when a guest speaker brings up something I’ve addressed time and time again during my writing programmes!
I also loved that Shayani explored the relevance of research in the context of both fiction and nonfiction. Bringing the workshop to travel writing, we spoke of travel literature of all kinds – from travelling through the forest in Little Red Riding Hood to more obvious choices like Around the World in 80 Days and Journey to the Centre of the Earth.
What the participants loved about the workshop was that every aspect of it was interactive. For instance, here’s just one of the four jamboards we created together.
Travelogues, maps, advertisements, travel tourism, travel blogs, journalistic articles … there’s so much we can write if we just research. Shayani left the participants with a writing assignment, and I’m waiting to read what they write! Like one of the participants said in the chatbox after we’d figuratively explored the earth, the solar system and the galaxies beyond ours through travel writing, ‘Thanks a whole universe! It was so cool!’
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