13th April, 2008

Our tie-up with Oxford Junior had a good start with nearly 20 children attending. The session started on time and all the children were squeezed onto the second floor, looking terrified and expectantly at Richa.

Richa started off with asking all the children to listen to the sounds around them in the bookstore. The sound of people walking about, paper rustling, people talking, the air conditioner humming were some of the sounds the children heard.
The next exercise required everyone to observe what was around them. The children mentioned the books, the wallpaper, the cds, the air conditioner but they all forgot to mention the only animate things in the store - people! Richa kindly reminded them about that.
The main exercise required the children to look at a picture of a carnival and write about the sights, sounds, tastes and tangible objects that they would experience when at a carnival. They jotted down points and then as a group wrote a short story on a 'hot summer's day at a fair'.
The stories were entertaining and well-written and we were all very impressed.
The next activity required the children to look at another picture, this time of a park with an empty table and empty benches around it. They were asked to write another story, individually, this time about imagining themselves in this park all by themselves.
After a brief introduction about the website, Ron and Richa divided the children into groups of three so that they could read out their stories to each other.
After an enjoyable and interactive session the excited children bade us farewell.

Scripting The Future - 23/03/08

With almost everyone's exams done and dusted, WriteHereWriteNow organised a workshop to bring the members back into the fold.
Over a rather enjoyable lunch, Richa, Megha, Mon and I decided that script-writing would be a good idea for our next workshop. There were some minor changes after that, but it had little impact on the final product - a workshop on scriptwriting for advertisements. Mon and I were in charge of this one, solely because I was confident we could conduct it successfully.
Having had some experience studying advertisements and script-writing, Mon and I began our research and decided to include a comprehensive lecture on advertising, the essential elements of television advertising, the essential elements of a script and the classification of shots. We would end the session by dividing the members into groups and asking them to write an ad script for a product that we gave them.
After great thought and endless emails to-and-fro, we also decided to include a couple of television advertisements into our lecture so as to give our members a clear idea of what we wanted. For this particular aspect of our lecture, Mon turned to man's latest friend - Youtube! After exhaustive research, and much disappointment, Mon discovered four ads that we could show the members, time permitting.
The date was set for the 23rd of March, a Sunday and that too, the Holi/Easter weekend. We were unsure of the turnout, but were set for the session, nonetheless.
Despite having everything ready, we approached the day with trepidation. We reached Megha's aAkriti office just as the first of our members arrived, Reejh. A host of members arrived after that and were all graciously ushered upstairs by Megha. In total, we had 9 members.
The session started a little late, but it took off quite swiftly. Advertisements are everywhere and most of the members didn't waste time pointing out the ads that annoyed them the most.
The first lecture was far more interactive than we expected. All the members had questions, most of them extremely pertinent to the topic of discussion. Plenty of views were exchanged and all the essentials of television advertisements were dissected and trisected by our all-too-knowledgeable members.
After the first session was over, we played two advertisements for the members - a Gatsby men's perfume ad featuring a-ha from the 1980's, and the highly amusing Nokia N93 ad featuring Gary Oldman.
We then went on to the second part of our lecture and explained the different columns that the members would have to use in their scripts. We also explained the use of the columns and gave them some pointers on how to put forth their information as concisely and precisely as possible.
To explain the classification of the three different types of shots, we asked for a volunteer. Advay's hand was the first up and hence, we used him to classify Long shots, Medium shots and Close-ups.
The lecture over, we divided the members into three groups. The first group were given Cell Phones; the second, chocolate and the third, most begrudgingly accepted furniture.
It was a noisy half hour that ensued with the members asking various types of questions. Finally, when the parents came knocking, we bid them goodbye with a cool glass of squash and a request to put their scripts up on the site.

Happy Birthday WriteHereWriteNow!

We're officially a year old! Yesterday, that is. But today was our grand celebration for the momentous occasion. After a week of planning games, and after endless phone calls to members to inform them about the party, we finally met at Megha's aAkriti office at 3:30. Mon and I reached a little late, unfortunately (traffic and all, you know) but Richa and Megha were there. Richa was enthusiastically putting up streamers with the help of a very early Priyadarshini. We were soon joined by more members, all a little lost as to what the celebrations were for!

Introductions were made though most of the members had met each other countless times before. The festivities finally began at around 4:30, with around 10 members. Ahaan, who could not stay for long, brought a card for WriteHereWriteNow (at least someone remembered!).
Richa, Mon and I had planned 4 games for the members to play. We started off with a toughie. Richa had brought a poem that she jumbled up and the members' task was simple: unjumble the poem!
Easier said than done! In the end, the first prize went to the person with 10 correct lines out of 22, Sohini. Oh well, they tried.The second game was 'The Pairs Game". After great pondering, Mon and I found some interesting pairs that the members might have actually heard of! Each of the twelve members was given a chit with the name of a character and the game required them to ask all the other members 3 questions to ascertain who their partner was. Some of the pairs were Hansel and Gretel, Beauty and The Beast, Laurel and Hardy, and the winners, Batman and Robin, who were actually Rhea and Sohini.
The third game was "Odd One Out". This was a fun, though challenging game. Most scored quite highly but the final winner was Rhea who scored a perfect 10.
After a recess of about 10 minutes, during which time Sushant displayed his Yogic talents, much to the enjoyment of the members and Megha!The last game was "The Kolkata Quiz". Most of the members were flummoxed by the questions! In their defense, we had included some trick questions. However, we had a clear winner in Sohini who scored 9 out of 10.
Then came the interesting part... the food! Indeed, the food was good. Richa had ordered the cake (all four pounds of it) from a well-known lady in the city and it was delicious! The members were extremely enthusiastic to get their hands on the stuff. Fortunately, Megha managed to ward them off till the final moment.
We had the pleasure of being joined by Megha's father (who's premises we were so efficiently destroying) for the "cake-cutting". However, he was not able to stay for long, though he did try a very small bite of the cake.Thanks to Mon organising the members into a line, the cake was finally cut in an orderly fashion. We are still to figure out why Mon and I (who only joined in November last year) were cutting the cake! However, we aren't complaining!
Megha had edited the videos from our workshops at the Nature Study Park and at the Victoria Memorial which she played for the members while we enlisted the help of Sushant (or is it Tanmay, Mon would ask) to serve the members cake, chips and Megha's superb home-made vegetarian (bird flu, you know) burgers. Never had the members been as quiet than when they were munching on the delicious fare.After seconds and thirds were had by all (especially Richa and the two of us!) the members dispersed, thanking us and of course, receiving further instructions to contribute to the site, this time with book reviews. Here's hoping!

2007 Ends and 5th Jan Comes Closer

When Richa first emailed us asking whether we'd like to conduct the songwriting workshop at the premises of the Victoria Memorial on the 5th of January, we were stunned. We'd known that another lady was coming to hold this workshop which would be followed by a video making session. Unfortunately the lady had been called away on work, and since we'd shown a great deal of enthusiasm when discussing a prospective songwriting workshop, Megha and Richa decided to give us a shot at it.

After sending them 'thank you' mails, we decided that we needed to decide on the lecture and activities then and there. No dawdling. We got to work researching some of the theories behind songwriting and then planned some activities that would put the theories into practice. We hoped we'd get a good crowd.

Being so reliant on technology means we're ever so slightly unconventional but as they say, if you have it flaunt it. Or in this case, use it. The first activity required the members to differentiate between verses, choruses and the bridge, which would eventually help them write their own song. After an exhaustive search of our music library, a good six songs were found and their lyrics duly emailed to M and R. That is the other M and R.
The songs we decided on were Invisible Sun by The Police, If I Ever Lose My Faith In You by Sting, Sealed With A Kiss and three songs by a-ha. These songs best fit the 6 basic musical forms that we wanted to teach the members. Most of the members got all six correct, others five.
By the end of the day we'd emailed the 'lecture' and the activities to Megha and Richa as well. After receiving their approval we spent the following week tweaking the lecture, adding song lyrics to it, and making charts to better explain our points. What I'd reckoned would've been arduous turned out to be incredibly fun.
While making the chart on 'What is a song?' we consulted an interesting source; 'The Doctor' aboard the Starship Voyager. Let me explain. Star Trek Voyager is a favourite of Ron's and mine, and one episode deals with meeting a species who have never heard music. The Doctor explains what it is, and indeed he seemed to make a great deal of sense. So cheers to the creators of Voyager!I won't say we were overly anxious about the workshop, we were more worried about the members not turning up. Thankfully, come 5th Jan, a bright sunny day lay ahead. We circled the VM for a good 45 minutes hoping for a parking space. We didn't find one, of course. But once the members arrived we got out all the equipment; charts, ipods, docking stations, tripod, folders, and we were ready to go.
A good 15 members turned up and it was a wonderful session. Interactive and interesting. The second activity required the members to use a song name and song line that we had provided to write a song of their own. Song titles included Rain, Wolf, Adventure and Ride with corresponding lines 'falls down over me', 'time to worry', 'for so many days' and 'where I want to go'. The resulting songs were fascinating and proved that most of the members had a flair for imaginative and creative song-writing. Do we see some Grammy winners in the future?The final activity turned out to be the toughest! Apart from losing most of the members to the long line for the washroom, we found that the members had considerable difficulty deciding on a tune for their brilliant songs. However, Aditya, our guitarist for the day, was most helpful and readily gave the sparring pairs advice on singing. Chirag, our cameraman for the day duly took videos of the pairs singing and the session ended with the last pair's 'music video'.
Music is something most people love and understand and that definitely helped make our session a success. Playing some songs also added some spice to it. Indeed, at the end of the session one of the members complained that there should be more such sessions, every weekend! As Richa said, we do have a life.

22nd December, 2007

Our second book review session at the British Council was just as entertaining but far more fruitful than the first one. This time, Ron and I had the advantage of being not so overwhelmed by the number of children present. Been there, done that!
Richa's lecture was just as entertaining as the previous one, and the children showed a great deal more maturity and team work during this session. However I felt there was more interaction the first time. Ron and I, after the first book review session had decided that the children might understand the concept of a book review better if they read one. After exhaustive research (?) Ronita had located a simple review of Stormbreaker. This I definitely think helped the children's writing. They did indeed seem a lot less likely to make it in the advertising field than the first lot, and more like writers.
The enjoyable part was when the were given the writing assignment. It seemed no one could remember their character's names, and Richa, Ron and I kept asking the other kids for help. It was fun and enjoyable.
After mango and black currant juice was distributed to all (several were swapped of course) we ended by telling the children a little about writeherwritenow and asked them all to join.

Sights and Sounds

The venue for our next workshop, Sights and Sounds was the Nature Study Park. It was the 15th of December and all members were requested to be there by 3. Attendance was a little low and the dismal traffic delayed the session by nearly 20 minutes.

However, once all the members were present, Richa wasted no time in dispersing them around the park to list all the sounds they heard. There was indeed a variety of sounds if one kept quiet long enough to hear them!
The members returned to us, thankfully all in one piece, with long lists of birds chirping, teachers chatting, insects buzzing and the ever-present sound of traffic.
Richa then sent the members off on another wild goose-chase, quite literally, this time to keenly observe the colours around them. The park was, of course, the source of much colour and this exercise kept the members busy for a while.

When they finally returned with lists of yellow from the sun's reflection in the water, the grey colour of the water itself, the green leaves and the white geese, Richa set them yet another agonising task; the members would now have to incorporate the colours from the lists into the clothes of a fictional character that they were to create. The sounds were to be incorporated into the music that would accompany the character as it entered the 'scene'.
The members found this particular exercise very enjoyable and all came up with extremely original and fascinating characters.
This was also the first workshop when we started taking videos of the sessions. The videos will be edited later and posted on youtube so that other people can see the work we do.
Though Mon and Megha recorded quite a bit of the session itself, we also took short videos of each of the members present talking about their experiences with writeherewritenow. The members were shy at first but soon got over that to make concise speeches that were entertaining as well as informative.
After this thoroughly entertaining session, we all dispersed at 5 pm.

8th December, 2007

8th December, 2007 was the day that Mon and I officially started working with writeherewritenow. We started off with The Big Wild Read at British Council Library. About 30 young children were present for the workshop and all looked terrified as if they were coming in for an exam!
However, Richa's good humour diffused the situation. She was soon extolling the virtues of a well-written book review, highlighting some of the salient features such as not being afraid of one's readers, never giving away essential plot details, adding a sense of suspense in the review itself and the importance of revision.
The students were then divided into age-groups of 3 or 4 and were asked to make a verbal presentation on their favourite book. This turned out to be quite a point of contention. Most of the children could not decide on a single book that they all liked. Hence, as the "teachers", the four of us were asked for our opinion on various books.
Once decided, the presentations began. All were extremely entertaining and it was clear that some of the children will have bright futures in the performing arts or advertising.
The final segment required the children to write individual book reviews on a book prescribed by The Big Wild Read. Much help was sought during this segment as well but all the children managed to finish in time.
The session ended with an introduction to writeherewritenow and a request to all the children to join the site.
The session was certainly a success and very interactive. For Mon and myself, this was an enlightening beginning!