Last year, St. Mary's School had its first lit fest, and I was delighted to be part of it. Talking to starry-eyed children is an experience like no other, and that's why lit fests in school are special.After addressing the children who were gathered together in the hall, we visited a few classrooms, met the girls and looked at the work they had put together. It was good fun, and I wished I had more time with each child. In an hour, I could do no justice to 150 very different reading-related projects. Stories, 3-D projects, book reports, reviews ... These girls from classes I to III had them all! (Some very honestly told me, 'My father and I made this' or 'My mother did everything and I did the colouring'.)Many of the children I met are now in my Writers' Club, and I'm delighted to be working with them all year on their writing.They were excited to meet me again, … [Read more...]
Working with Poetry
Many children write poetry. Rhyme is fun, having your poem published in the school magazine is even more fun. Teachers and parents encourage children to write poetry, which is good. Of course there's a 'but'.People have been writing poetry forever. Forget the ancient languages, in English alone, even those who don't opt to study Old English begin by studying Chaucer et al, who wrote almost 700 years ago. When children write about rainy days and their favourite pets, what are they doing to make their work stand out? Why will their work be special? That's what we work with when I conduct poetry writing workshops.Yesterday's workshopAs we played with poetry, people kept popping in to ask what was happening. A Sunday afternoon at a library meant we had lots and lots of visitors.Exasperated with the interruptions, the children finally asked me, "Why do so many people want to … [Read more...]
Working with Stories
Stories are magical; we all know that. What is even more magical is when you can feel creative energy pulsing all around you and then see those ideas transforming into stories.Creative Writing with ChildrenYesterday, at The Story Station, I met a group of enthusiastic young children, bursting with ideas. One boy had made a list of ideas that he wanted to develop into stories. And as a writing exercise, he came up with a portal to Legoland!A six-year-old told me she wants to write scary stories. Her first story was about Nina and the monster under her bed. The second was about falling through a wall into a place where it was Halloween! Terrified of a skeleton there, she ran back through the wall to safety.Yes, she is six (okay, six and a half, she would insist) years old, and yes, she wrote it right there in front of me during my workshop.Creative writing workshops … [Read more...]
Catching Up – Workshops
It's always fun to do workshops when I don't have to organise them! Last week, I conducted a fun workshop at The King's School in Goa. We worked with critical thinking - something that is close to my heart also because I taught Theory of Knowledge and enjoyed it so much.Lots of people ask me what a critical thinking workshop involves. For me, it involves understanding our prejudices and assumptions. Of course we need to make assumptions all the time. But perhaps we could look at the ways in which we jump to conclusions, what fallacies creep in, and how everything we know and think is shaped by more factors than we can count.An interesting assumption that cropped up during this workshop, for instance, was that almost everyone in the room assumed the store owner in a tiny written exercise we discussed was male!I'm travelling to Chandrapur and Akola next week to do some … [Read more...]
The Lit Bug Fest 2019
So often, I come across posts that talk about how lit fests are a waste of time for authors, and how lit fests exclude rather than include. For me, though, lit fests remain unadulterated fun. Does this have something to do with being a children's writer, perhaps?The Lit Bug Fest, Pune's own lit fest, is in its fourth year, and I have been involved with it for the last three years. I love everything about it - the anticipation, the fest itself, and then, the high I'm left with for a few days after.Writing about the day helps me relive it and remember. Here are my posts about the fest last year and the year before that:The Lit Bug Fest 2017The Lit Bug Fest 2018What I did this year:A Marathi PlayMy day began with a Marathi play presented by students from classes V and VI. Honestly, when I sat down to watch, I did not expect to enjoy it much. It was a school … [Read more...]
Explore the Prophecy of Rasphora
Last month, The Story Station invited me to interact with a group of young writers. I spoke about my journey as a writer and conducted an activity based on my latest middle-grade novel, The Prophecy of Rasphora.A little about the book ...Three young girls stumble upon Rasphora, a land behind a waterfall. There, they begin to teach Rasphorans the languages they know, and slowly, they pick up the Rasphoran language and are soon speaking like natives.Where the story led ...When Vaishali, founder of the Story Station, told me that the theme of this year's Lit Bug Fest would be language, things clicked into place instantly. My focus, through Rasphora, is language, and the activities I conduct around it are all based on language. In many ways, language is central to the story - ideas are lost because of a dying language, and language becomes a pathway to a new … [Read more...]
Pen to Paper Creative Writing Workshop
The Pen to Paper competition was a nationwide search for young writers, organised by Edupeer and ICICI Lombard. It received about 10,000 entries! These were narrowed down to 2,000 and 1,000 and then, finally, the top 150 writers from all over the country were selected to receive training from an author.When FunOKPlease contacted me to ask whether I would be willing to facilitate the Pune chapter of the workshop, I hesitated. I don't usually work with non-fiction; I find fiction more engaging, more fun.Yet, I was intrigued. I do enjoy workshops with children who don't yet know one another. When people get to know one another through the course of an afternoon, it's exciting!And this workshop was no different. Eleven teenagers got together and shared stories. We spoke of pranks, humour, mystery and poetry.We asked ourselves crucial questions: What is the purpose of art? … [Read more...]
What if …?
I love 'what ifs'.What if there's another me on the other side of the mirror?What if a half-boy-half-deer wanted to fit in?What if someone experimented with smells and could create them?What if an old Bajaj scooter began to fly?These were some of the what-ifs that inspired the stories in The Story-Catcher. What-ifs can go anywhere. We don't need to rein them in and pull them back.And so, during creative writing workshops, I love to see where they can take us. Here's what a few children came up with yesterday.I love 'What if all my what ifs came true'! What's your favourite?The children then went on to write poems called 'What if', which were delightful. They played with opposites and humour, as well as beauty.What if a boy could become a girl? What if a speck of dust was as precious as a pearl?Aren't ideas magical?What's next?The Lit Bug Fest, … [Read more...]
Creative Writing Workshops
What's better than a creative writing workshop with enthusiastic children?Two creative writing workshops with enthusiastic children!On Saturday, I did a workshop at Meridian Kids Club for the first time. New place, new children - it's always fun! An activity I love is creating monsters together, and this time was no different.We played a game during which the children came up with a huge greenish monster with twenty heads, a hundred eyes, one tooth, no noses and just one foot. The interesting thing about this monster, though, was that he was ugly and good. He would clean up the world. Good and ugly was a wonderful combination, and I'm glad it came up. (I've written earlier about attempting to investigate why all the monsters children create at my workshops are black and fairies are blond.)I asked the children to create the monster's enemy too, for conflict is central to a … [Read more...]
The Writers’ Club 2018-19
Another year at the Writers' Club has come to an end, and what a wonderful session we had to bring a creative year of stories to an end!We began, as always, with an announcement of the winners of this year's Writers' Club competition. Competitions are such fun! They create a mood of anticipation and celebration, which ensures that the energy stays high throughout the session.As before, two girls from a previous batch evaluated the entries, for I feel that learning to critique work is an important part of growing as a writer. Their responses and comments were heart-warming, as they paid attention to detail and identified why they liked what they liked.The highlight of the session, though, was our special guest, Dr Sreeja Nag, dear friend, ex-student of St. Mary's and research engineer at NASA. She was wonderful, warm and expressive, and we had a lovely hour with … [Read more...]