In the first week of June, I will be attending the Asian Festival of Children’s Content (AFCC) in Singapore as a speaker. Needless to say, I’m very excited about it as the AFCC is without doubt the biggest event of its kind in Asia. It brings together creators of children’s content from across the world, […]
Author: Payal
Week #18: Teamwork!
Collaboration. Now, there’s a word I’d never expected to get excited about. But life has a funny way of dropping things into your lap that you least expected. This past year or so has been a lot about collaborating and the rest of 2014 is likely to continue that way. The surprising thing is, I’m […]
Week #17: Back from Camp NaNoWriMo
Yep, I was at Camp NaNoWriMo this April. My target was 25,000 words. I managed about 18,000. Not bad, eh? This year at Camp NaNo, I was attempting to juggle two writing projects. The first I won’t mention out of shame. The other was a novel I’ve had in mind since about the middle of […]
Week #16: A mini-crisis
This is going to be quick and dirty because I’m currently involved in some fire-fighting. I’m sure there’s a lesson in this for all of us, I’m just not sure what it is yet. This is what happened: I usually password-protect all my writing work. Even on my own computer. I don’t know why—it’s a […]
Week #15: The best ebook deals
There is a Kobo in the house, and while I’m now convinced that ebooks are not Terrible Things, given the choice, I’d still reach for a ‘real’ book. The only times I prefer an ebook is when I have to travel for a long period of time and when I just have to have a […]
Week #14: The Night Watch, a review
Finally, a book review: Sarah Waters’ The Night Watch, a riveting and most peculiar novel, mostly because the story is told in reverse. This is what the blurb has to say about it: Tender and tragic, set against the turbulent backdrop of wartime Britain…. Moving back through the 1940s, through air raids, blacked-out streets, illicit […]
Week #13: A report from CCLF 2014
Last week I spent a day at the Chandigarh Children’s Literature Festival 2014, hanging out with readers and schoolchildren from the city as well as hobnobbing with fellow authors and storytellers. My session was titled “Unwelcome guests: Is a ghost in your PC ever good news?” It was an interactive one-hour session, where the audience […]
Week #12: The best writing advice I’ve got
They say that you either got it or you don’t. That you’re born with it and you cannot be taught it. How to write, that is. Be that as it may, there are a lot of things we can do to become better writers and one of those is listen to advice from those who […]
Week #11: Out of my comfort zone
Working on my first non-fantasy novel is turning out to be an intriguing experience. There are no ethereal spirits, no special powers, no alternate universes and no magic in this story. It’s both fun and challenging, but the question is, how much different is it compared to writing fantasy? When it comes to fantasy, the […]
Week #10: Telling tales
A few days back I was asked by someone how I make up stories. It was funny because the asker was an artist and sculpture himself, and obviously has a creative process that is as alien to me as mine is to him. I didn’t quite know how to answer him, so I said, “I […]