I love inviting people to talk to my Writers' Club - I think a new person brings a new kind of energy. With this being my fifth year with the Writers' Club at St. Mary's, I've started planning my sessions better, and involving previous batches each time we do something new and different.Yesterday, I invited Samiksha Deshpande, an ex-Writers' Club student, to talk to the girls. She was part of my very first Writers' Club batch and wrote two stories for our sesquicentennial collection, Flickering Flames. More recently, her poem was one of the nine winners of the Book Trotters Club #SummerWriting2019 competition, which received 93 entries.Samiksha chose to do a session on limericks. I love working with limericks, so I was delighted when she chose that as her topic!I sat at the back of the class for a large part of the session, interfering only later to work with the girls … [Read more...]
Words and Worlds at the Vidya Valley Lit Fest 2019
I was unwell and could not stop coughing. Yet, armed with my enthusiasm (and a pill), I went for the Vidya Valley Lit Fest--and came back energised. The excitement pulsing through the school kept me going - and of course, the thoughtfulness of the team of parent volunteers in organising a mic helped!Every time I speak to groups of children at lit fests, I realise how different one group is from another. During my three sessions with Class VI at Vidya Valley, I was struck by this yet again. One group was noisy and enthusiastic; the second was almost unbelievably good; the third was full of questions. And each session was wonderful.'Words and Worlds' - that's what my sessions were called. Working with the beautiful land of Rasphora was delightful, but we did so much more. We spoke of language itself and how we use our words to create worlds in literature.Describing my journey … [Read more...]
Using StoryWeaver in Class
I've been resisting writing this post for ever so long because it sounds like some sort of advertising campaign. I promise it's not. It's just that I've used StoryWeaver so many times during workshops that I really wanted to share how easy it is to bring such wonderful resources into the classroom.Why StoryWeaver?The first answer - it's wonderful material that is free for use. Is that two answers already?Considering the amount of material teachers require for class, free resources are a boon. We need them. We need to be able to share stories and ideas freely and easily.Two, I can download and use resources from StoryWeaver offline. Many workshops I conduct are in places where the internet is patchy, to say the least. The last workshop I conducted, for instance, was at a school in Bhusawal. Earlier that day, when I was trying to check my email, I took 20 minutes to open … [Read more...]
Lit Fests in Schools
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...]