A child is always happy when he wins a competition; holding the prize or any trophy is a reminder of his amazing feat, but when it comes to Keekli, we ensure that the prize is something much bigger and revered for life. It come with the addition of a promise of skill building, teaching with a difference and engaging conversations with senior writers. Members of the Keekli Charitable Trust organized a creative writing workshop for the winners of the short story writing competition which featured students of government schools in Shimla District. The event was organised in the month of May, in collaboration with the SJVN Foundation. Jury members/resource persons Shrinivas Joshi, Sangeeta Saraswat and Atma Ranjan were present who reviewed the shortlisted stories again with the children.
The idea is always about grooming young children, to be better writers and readers, a process which they were part of today as they read their stories aloud in front of all, shedding all inhibitions. Each child received general feedback from all the resource persons with the next step of working with them on an individual basis. While congratulating the young, budding writers on penning few very good stories, the mentors also shared valuable pointers such as the flow of the story, the message should not be shared separately rather embedded in the style of writing and to work on the introductions to make them intriguing so that the reader is glued till the end.
During this next month, the fifteen winners will work side by side with their mentors. Each mentor has been assigned to work with five children, to rework the stories for there storyline, grammar and basic structure to make them print ready.
The children will also have the opportunity to suggest names for the title of the book, create the artwork for the cover and supplement their stories with any sketches to make them more creative. Due credit will be given to the children. The attendees for today were Ankita Sharma, Diya, Preeti, Khyati Verma, Kritika Verma, Shalini, Divya, Aarushi, Tarun Thakur, Navjot Kaur and Pallavi.
The day ended on a positive note as they all left happy armed with the newly gained knowledge to become better writers.
