Dheera's Workshop of Whimsy

WRITING TIPS IV

Hello and Happy Monday toall!. Except that this is Wednesday because my internet was down...so sorry to keep everyone waiting.

Shall we begin with writing a story now? I have been told, ‘Enough of these writing ideas! We have a journal and we are scribbling every day like you said. Now get on with the storywriting…’ So here we go.

What do we require to write astory?

A topic.

So choose one. Choose something that really, really interests you. Something you have experienced,enjoyed, hated, known about closely.

While the search is on,remember that a story has a theme a plot, a structure, characters and a setting.

This week we will deal withTheme.

Theme is something important the story has to tell. What your character learns as the story progresses is the theme of the story. If at the start of the story your hero is a sad, non-performing loser and by the end of the story he hasn’t changed or evolved, got better or worse, your story is not interesting. In every successful storysomething happens. And that happening is the theme of the story.

In ‘Ouch! Cried Planet Earth,’ the current book I am writing, the main character Tiki is pale, bullied, timid and friendless. ‘Ouch..’ is the story of what happens to Tiki at the family farm and how it helps him become an Earth Hero.

Think about what is going to happen in your story.

NB... One of the questions I have been asked, is what should we write in the journal. The answer is ANYTHING that comes to your mind when you sit down to write. A thought, a poem, about a book or movie that impacted you...anything at all. The important thing is to sit down at the allotted time and write for the alloted time.:)

Until next week then! Cheers!

Dheera

WRITING TIPS III

Hello!

This week we will see animals in all the people around us. By that I mean, if you look long and hard at anyone, you will be able to find a resemblance to an animal, bird, fish, lizard. Try this exercise in a crowded place. A mall, a doctor’s waiting room,at school, at collage, at the park. Write down the particular features,gestures, mannerisms of people which remind you of an animal and why. This is an exercise for your out door journal. You will have a lot of fun but don’t let anyone catch you giggling to yourself. They will think you are loony.

Next, write an ode to anypart of your body. I once fractured my toe just as I was expecting my Bridge group to arrive. It was so painful that it was funny. Here was I all dressed upto play my game and here was this blue, disfigured toe almost making me scream with pain. So after the Bridge game was over, I wrote an ode to my toe. The beginning lines went like this:

O woe

Tall toe

A smashing knock

And you’re laid low.

The toe ring flew

Your moorings askew

A purple hue

You swell and ache

While the ladies at Bridge

Devour Carrot cake…..and so on. It is quite a long poem.

Try it! I hope you won’t have to write about a hurt part of your anatomy.

Since we are on the subjectof bodies, the next exercise can be a short dialogue between two or more parts of your body. And if you feel like it, do send it to me!

Until next week then, happy composing!

Dheera

WRITING TIPS II

Hello again!

Its Monday once more and timeto pull up the boot straps and buckle down to some more writing tips. I do hope everyone has a journal and 7 topics you have written about in the last 7 days? Please, please don’t read what you have written so far. You can do it on the 30thof April and trust me you will have a wonderful surprise.

The first exercise this week is to write down 7 topics on which you would like to read a story. Now write the summary of one of the stories that you have chosen. This can be the writing page for the day or an additional writing piece.

As Bonni Goldberg says in Room to Write, ‘Making room in your life to write generates even more room for your writing.’ So write as much as you can. Look for free moments in the day in addition to the mandatory writing time you have set aside. While traveling record a conversation. Imagine the life of a co-traveler by looking at his/her expression and write about it.

Describe a scene on the road. Write from the heart. Don’t worry about being read. Write for your self and you will find the words flowing. 

Look at the colors around you. Choose one. Notice how many things around you are of that color. Write about it. Writing is like painting or drawing. Just like you can draw anything you see or imagine, so can you write about it.

Make an away-from-your-desk journal. Carry it in your purse. Begin filling it with you musings.

See you next week! Meanwhile, may the pen rule!

Dheera

Hello All,

Here is the first batch of writing tips I would like to recommend.

READ...read and read some more. Most good writers read up a storm. Words empower the writer and words are found in books, journals, magazines. I could never read much because of my problem with dyslexia, but I try to keep aside time each day to read. You must too, it helps. You will obviously read what interests you and that will reflect in your writing.

WRITE everyday. This is a must. Set aside, 5, 10, 15 minutes in a day as your writing time. Try to write at the same time everyday. Make a journal for your daily writings. Put the date on the top and write about anything that comes to your mind. The important thing is not to lift your hand until the full 15 minutes are over. Don't bother about spelling (which always held me back because I couldn't spell even the simplest words) punctuation or grammar. Just write. When you finish please resist the temptation to read over what you just wrote. Do this exercise for a month before you read over what you have written. Tell me what you see.

OBSERVE everything with a view to describing it. View the world around you with all five senses. See the mountain, feel its texture, taste the dew drops, smell the pine trees, hear the echo as it calls back your name. Describe even the most common place object in detail in your mind or better still write it down.

Well, that's it for this session. Write to me at [email protected] for any questions or if I can help in any other way.

Happy writing!

Dheera

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Last night it rained leeches at Kamla Nehru Park, on Malabar Hill, in Bombay.

The park, the lesser known sibling of the glamorous Hanging Gardens, is tucked away on the other side of the road from its renowned elder brother, also known as Sir Phirozeshah Mehta Garden.

For those who are unfamiliar, Kamla Nehru Park houses a large, concrete boot, into which children below 12 years are allowed to climb. But that is not all. The park has a singing fountain, which comes on, to the tunes of old Hindi movie songs, every evening at 7; a posse of policemen, lurking in dark corners, hoping to catch young lovers trying to steal a private moment; and leeches.

The leeches are not a perennial factor, and nor is the singing fountain. It would be fair to say that they swap places. When the monsoon arrives, the fountain stops and the leeches appear.

This year there is a larger contingent than normal. They are besieging every part of the garden.

They remind me of my father.

When we were young, the highlight of the visit to our farm in the foot hills of Nainital, was walking through the sugar cane fields. It was there, that I found my first pet. A bird with a broken wing. We saved it from being attacked by bigger bully birds. My father, the best Vet in the world, repaired the damaged wing and the little munia bird lived to delight me for many years.

At the farm we always woke at the crack of dawn, wore black, ill-fitting gum boots, held long poles to navigate through the uneven fields and off we went in a convoy of human bodies. We inspected the crops, scratched our arms on rough sugarcane leaves, found orphaned animals and sometimes killed a snake.

The stories from our escapades on those long eventful walks could fill a book but back to the matter on hand. Leeches.

We always returned from the walks, ravenous for breakfast. And while we waited for it to be served, we performed a daily ritual that made us hoot with joy. It had to do with my father's spindly, hairless calves.

'Ready?' He would ask.

'Oh yes!' we would say, holding our breath.

And then, in slow motion, he would extend his legs one by one and our bearer would pull off his gumboots. Quite unfailingly, there was a delight waiting for us to see.

Leeches!

My father's legs, knee down, would be black with leeches! All sizes, depending on how much of his blood they had feasted on already. Big ones and small ones, fat ones and thin ones, velvet black on the top, with small, dusky antennae.

They punctured his skin and left red sores all over his calves, his feet and even in between his twisted toes! We envied my father, as none of us ever got even one leech on us. We would sit and watch him pull them off one by one and put them on the stone floor. Then we'd run into the kitchen and bring out the salt to sprinkle on the black blood suckers, to dissolve them to death. We watched in cruel fascination as the leeches squirmed and twisted, exposing their grey under bellies, oozing slime all over the floor as they died a painful death.

I wonder now, why my mother didn't stop us from torturing the poor creatures. I think she was more interested in applying antiseptic lotion on her husband's bloodied legs.

When we asked him why only he got to have all the leeches, he looked mysterious and said, 'Magic gumboots!'

My father's legs always remained scarred. Long after we sold the farm and the leeches faded away into a far memory pocket, his thin, hairless, marked legs bore testimony to the tale.

I was reminded of my father today on my morning walk.

Leeches are not common in Bombay. In Delhi, one may spy the odd creature making its slimy way up the garden wall but in Bombay, leech-spying does not happen often.

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Except in the monsoon at the Kamla Nehru Park, on Malabar Hill.