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 2018 What I did this year: A Marathi Play My 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...]
Reading and Data
Adults love data. They love graphs and statistics and numbers. During workshops with adults, the moment I put up a graph, I have everyone's attention as if I'm finally saying something 'real'. And that's why I started working with real-time polls through Mentimeter. I show my audience a question and all those with smart phones (usually nearly everyone in the room) vote. And they see numbers, which makes everyone happy. Question One: What do you read most often? For this question, I allow participants to choose more than one option. This helps them feel comfortable, not pinned down to choosing one and being 'wrong'.I give them four options: Blue - Newspapers, magazines, etc.Yellow - Facebook/WhatsApp postsGreen - StorybooksRed - Other As you can see, there's nothing really, solidly conclusive about this. Yet, on the whole, have a look at this graph, which combines the … [Read more...]
Making Creative Writing Engaging
Sometimes, I wonder whether secretly, I conduct creative writing workshops more to inspire myself than to inspire the children I work with. Whatever it is, I do know that I enjoy myself tremendously whenever I teach creative writing. I feed off the enthusiasm of the children and I come home ready to write, which is invigorating. Children and Writing Many children love to write. I was one of them, and I wrote all kinds of things, mainly inspired by what I read. I wrote about magic and school, and things that I thought would be moving - like earnest poetry about war and poverty. Writing is fun; it may even be good. But when publishing is so easy, I find that many parents and teachers think everything that children write is perfect. I don't always agree. Here are my pet peeves: Forced rhyme I … [Read more...]
Reading Workshops: Why? What? How?
Many, many parents ask me what a reading workshop is. What happens during a reading workshop? Who should attend a reading workshop and why? What will the outcome of a reading workshop be? This post tries to explain all that. What children read and why Often, at reading workshops I conduct, we talk about books we love. I'm not very fond of the question 'What is your favourite book?' because I think it is impossible to have a favourite book. I do realise, however, that it's a promising start to a conversation, plus a way for me to get an idea of the interest and reading level of the group I'm working with. "What do you read?" I ask, attempting to be neutral in my question. I don't ask them how many enjoy reading because that feels like a trick question. They are already conditioned enough to know they are "supposed" to like reading. The question has to feel less threatening; … [Read more...]
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