Payal Dhar's Blog: Writer's Log, page 11

52 reviews of 2015

Last year’s blogging project was a success, enough to ensure that Writeside.net got some traffic, made enough money to cover hosting bills and kept me writing. Thus, it’s no surprise that I’m all excited about flagging off another blogging project for 2015.

Yep, you’re right—this year it’s all going to be about reviews. The original plan was to make it only book reviews, but somehow I don’t think I’m going to be able to keep that up for long. So here’s a revised plan: reviews of… anything! Books, games, software, gadgets, places—in short, an excuse to write about more or less anything that grabs my fancy.

So 52 reviews of 2015 will kick off in a few days with a book review. Stay tuned.

And, of course, Happy New Year!

~PD

Week #52: Goodbye 2014

Fifty-two weeks of reading and writing have flown by—I can hardly believe it! It was mostly fun, sometimes tiresome and sometimes desperate, but what counts are those 52 blog posts, one for each week of 2014.

It is the time of the year when I like to look back and start thinking of my goals for the next year. That makes me sound like a very organized and focused person; that is an exceedingly misleading impression—I’m as lazy and scatterbrained as they come, I just like to make lots of lists and plans. Proof of that is in the list (yes, another one) of things I’ve been planning and failing to do for years, namely:

finishing Amazing Grace and
redesigning Writeside.net.

Back to the point, 2014 was such a blur that I don’t quite remember what happened in the earlier part of the year. I only recall working furiously to finish putting Eat the Sky together and hand it to the publishers, and filling in the holes in Slightly Burnt. The second half of the year was all about getting excited about both books coming out. And then, suddenly, 2014 was all over. By the way, Amazing Grace did see a lot of action, especially this past week, and a story is finally emerging, but don’t hold your breath. Meanwhile, the plan for redoing the design of Writeside.net gathered many inches of dust at the back of the shelf.

So what’s the plan for 2015? Of course I have a list!

Another 52 weeks of blogging. More on that tomorrow.
Start on Satin 2.
Go swimming in the summer.
Learn a language.
And, of course, try to finish Amazing Grace.

But for now, goodbye 2014! Thanks for being mostly good to me.

~PD

Week #51: Five writing styles to try

Making plans is easy; it’s carrying them out that’s the hard part. But what would be the fun in never making plans at all? So here’s another of my lists of things to try some day—in this case, writing styles/options/whatever to attempt.

Collaboration

Albeit the collaborative effort that was Eat the Sky, Drink the Ocean was overall a great experience, you’d think that I would’ve learnt my lesson about uttering that C-word again. But surprise, surprise, I find myself somewhat more positively inclined towards the idea of collaboration than I would have thought possible. Eat the Sky was more about putting the collection together, but I’m quite enthused about writing a novel with another author. Some interesting collaborative work I’ve read recently, including Penni Russon and Kate Constable’s Dear Swoosie, John Green and David Levthan’s Will Grayson, Will Grayson, and Sowmya Rajendran and Niveditha Subramaniam’s two Mayil books, are proof that working together is not the one-way ticket to disaster one would imagine. I don’t imagine that it to be all happiness and chocolate cake, but it will definitely be a new challenge.

Epistolary

Okay, so I only learnt the meaning of this word a few months back, but it’s always been on my list. The trouble is, it’s been done to death, so finding a new angle on this will be a task in itself. Not just letters, even emails, tweets, IMs and social media posts have all been done. Many years back I wrote a short story based on forum posts, private messages and instant messages. It was quite dire (and was rejected) and now I’m too ashamed to read it, but would like to have another go at this format, be it with letters, emails or other forms of communication.

Second-person narrative

It is well acknowledged in the realms of fiction writing that writing about you is one of the most difficult techniques to pull off. (Waterstones.com has a list of some people who managed to do it in style.) I wouldn’t say that I’m champing at the bit to try this one out, but it seems like an interesting project to dust out on a boring afternoon. I once had a mad idea that I would write a love story in second-person, making it a combination of the two things I’m least likely to write.

Rashomon style

Again, I’ve been wanting to try this since before I learnt of this term. According to TVtropes.org, a Rashomon-style narrative is “where the same event is recounted by several characters, and the stories differ in ways that are impossible to reconcile”. The term apparently comes from the Akira Kurosawa film Rashomon. One of my favourite books that employs this technique is Sarah Waters’ Fingersmith. It’s hard to talk of the Rashomon narrative without mentioning the unreliable narrator, but I don’t believe it to be the same thing necessarily. (A brilliant young adult novel told by an unreliable narrator is Justine Larbalestier’s Liar.) It’s quite possible for two people to have completely different experiences of the same thing, and that’s what I’d like to explore.

Graphic novel/story

I drew a lot as a kid, including illustrating my own stories, but somewhere along the way, I lost the ability to draw—I don’t know if you just lose it it; maybe I just stopped drawing. Writing and illustrating my own graphic story, though, is probably an impossible dream. But I’d still like to author a graphic novel some day or even work on the graphic-ization of one of my books. This would have to be a collaboration, so I could, again, kill two birds with one stone.

Verse

Ha ha, just kidding. A novel in verse sounds like the most annoying thing to me, so I doubt I’d ever write one. And yes, this is number six in a list of five, so I lied.

~PD

Week #50: Slightly Burnt in the media

Slightly Burnt has been getting more media attention than any of my earlier books. Truth be told, this is mostly because it happens to address issues that are being talked about around the country right now. It’s also thanks to the definite strides young adult literature has been making in India over the years, with publishers and authors stepping out of their comfort zones. (Off topic: The five best YA novels I’ve read in 2014.)

Back to Slightly Burnt, the reviews are mostly positive, though not everyone likes everything. That said, the reviews I value most are those that come from the target audience. A (satisfied) young reader wrote to me today, saying:

The book… shows us something that is thought of as abnormal in a way that is very relatable…. My favourite character is Vikram. This is because his personality is a lot like mine. He’s a funny guy and quite a naive person. He is still exploring what he is. I can also relate to Komal, because I also like to cook. So if I think about it, it shows us how to relate to people, no matter what they are.

Professional reviewers are (usually) paid to read and have an opinion on your book, which can end up somewhat messy at times. Which is why I’m flattered, and frankly delighted, to have more or less managed to please most people. Here are some reviews that appeared in the media and various blogs:

Indian Express
Scroll.in
Hindu (interview)
My School of Thought
Bookivore
The Booklegger
The Life Stories
Gaysi

A couple of excerpts have appeared as well:

AntiSerious
Scroll.in

If you have anything to say about Slightly Burnt, drop me a mail or add it to the comments.

~PD

Week #49: Blog plans for 2015

It’s Week #49 already and I can’t believe 52 Weeks of Reading and Writing has been (more or less) a success, even though trying to to co-opt a couple of other bloggers didn’t quite work out. However, I’m pleased—and somewhat surprised—to report that I managed to stick to my own weekly schedule, apart from a minor hiccups while travelling or having serious attacks of laziness. It’s true, there are three weeks to go yet, but the end is nigh and celebrations may be planned.

Which brings me to the all-important question: what about next year? With less than a month to go, it’s not too early to be thinking about 2015 and how to keep Writer’s Log ticking over. I have a couple of ideas:

52 Weeks of Book Reviews: The one thing I had hoped to do for 52 Weeks of Reading and Writing was book reviews, though I didn’t manage too many. Considering that, would a weekly review throughout the year be too ambitious? I usually always read more than one book a week (certainly more than 52 in a year), so there’s just the little matter of de-lazing my self and writing a review once a week. Hmm.
52 Weeks of Tech: The other option is to shift to all things techie in 2015 and revive the Friday Night Freeware column. There’s a lot of freeware floating about and, of course, I love writing about software. A spin-off of this would be to do a weekly app review. Or maybe a combination of both.

Well, that’s my long list for now. Though I’m wondering if I might end up biting of more than I can chew…

~PD

Week #48: Weekend book haul

Having spent last Saturday at Bookaroo amidst books and authors, it’s hardly surprising that I came back with a decent haul of books and to-reads. Here’s a selection:

Queen of Ice by Devika Rangachari

Devika Rangachari can do two very interesting things—make history really fun and put away an unbelievable amount of chocolate. Her latest book, Queen of Ice is based in tenth-century Kashmir and tells the story of the ambitious, ruthless Queen Didda.

(Photo credit: Sayoni Basu)

As evidenced above, we also exchanged autographs and thinly-veiled insults. Later that evening, Devika fell asleep (?!) reading Slightly Burnt, which she assures me is not what it sounds like!

Talking of Muskaan by Himanjali Sankar

Himanjali had the unenviable task of editing my book while writing hers. Well, she did a sterling job of both. As the title hints, this is a story about Muskaan and what various people are saying about her. There’s already a lot out there about what it’s all about, so I’m not about to add to the spoiler party (Google it if you want to know), but broadly, it’s about fitting in, or not.

No Time for Goodbyes by Andaleeb Wajid

Andaleeb insists that she isn’t a sci-fi writer, but has done a bang-up job of whisking 16-year-old Tamanna back in time through a polaroid photo. And guess what, not only is Bangalore lovely in 1982, her mum is a teenager and they both seem to have the hots for the same boy! I loved this book, and have already ordered the second and third parts.

Here are all of us, signing each others’ books. No one fell asleep. x-(

~PD

Week #47: Keeping secrets

We all have secrets—or we have had them at some point in our lives. But why do we keep secrets? What do they tell us about ourselves? More importantly, what do they tell us about the rest of the world?

These are exactly the questions that Himanjali Sankar and I will be grappling with on 29 November at the Bookaroo Children’s Literature Festival in Delhi. The session is for 14- to 16-year-olds, but come along anyway if you have an insight about secrets and the keeping of them. (Disclaimer: We might make fun of doddering oldies 25 years and above.)

Himanjali is the author of Talking of Muskaan, a fantastic new book about being different. She also happens to be—gasp!—my editor at Bloomsbury and the reason that Slightly Burnt is a real book rather than a idea floating in my head. (By the way, you should be able to buy both books at the Bookaroo book stall.)

~PD

Week #46: Eat the Sky on tour in Bangalore

Eat the Sky, Drink the Ocean went on a whirlwind book tour and I got the chance to join Kirsty Murray, Isobelle Carmody and Samhita Arni on the Bangalore leg.

We kicked off on Sunday, 16 November, at the Oxford Bookstore, where the book was—literally—launched at our Bangalore audience. There were about a dozen children, plus a number of interested grown-ups. (Full disclosure: some of them had been emotionally blackmailed to be there.) There was masala tea, cookies and samosas too.

On the Monday, we set off to Inventure Academy for a session with young teenagers. This was a fantastic group, with a number of readers and writers among them. They were keen and asked some interesting questions as well. The afternoon session was at Christ University, where the audience was a few dozen graduate students. The discussion was slightly more serious, as we talked about gender, about writing, about society.

Tuesday saw us heading off towards Yelahanka to Aditi School, where we had a session with a group of class 8 students. This was one of the best groups we interacted with. The kids were responsive, enthusiastic and intelligent, full of questions and answers.

Next, we headed to Sristi School of Art, Design and Technology to speak to a group of young art and design students working on a project where they’ve been developing narratives aimed at children. We spoke about how our book came about, about gender and feminism. Later on, the students presented their own projects as well.

Apart from Bangalore, there was ample sky-eating and ocean-drinking in Delhi and Kolkata as well. Waiting for some photos to come my way.

~PD

Week #45: Eating the sky, drinking the ocean

Two things arrived this week: (a) Z, because of whom I became an aunt for the second time; and (b) copies of Eat the Sky, Drink the Ocean!

While is Z is busy getting used to the new world and will lie low in the nearish future, we’re having a grand old song and dance about Eat the Sky. If you’re in Delhi, Bangalore or Kolkata, do join us:

Delhi: 15 November, Oxford Bookstore, CP, 11 am
Bangalore: 16 November, Oxford Bookstore, 1 MG Mall, 4 pm
Kolkata: 19 November, Oxford Bookstore, Park Street, 5 pm

(Click on the invites for bigger images)

~PD

Week #44: Slightly Burnt, the finished goods

Yesss, it’s here! Slightly Burnt is hot off the press and I’m told copies are going out to bookshops tomorrow!

Slightly Burnt is a book about being different. About what happens when we don’t follow the rules that society has laid down for each of us. So what do you when you have a secret that the world doesn’t want to know about? Who do you tell?

Komal’s best friend Sahil has a secret that he can’t speak of, because he knows that ‘the world just wants us to be convenient’. The only person he can tell is Komal, but she doesn’t know how to deal with it either. Would it have been better for Sahil to have kept his mouth shut and lied to himself? Does it mean the end of a twelve-year friendship?

Pricing details, buy links and more information about the Bookaroo 2014 session for Slightly Burnt will be along soon. Meanwhile, read the blurb here.

~PD