A humming word

Failure and its importance came into limelight (for me) when Nabeel A, organisor of FailFest, began conducting shows and its success amplified the significance of failure. Having followed his work and learning about Failure in close quarters, I commend the participants for accepting failure and moving ahead.  After a series of fairly successful years at Nivasini, 2017 bit particularly hard as due to some unforeseen circumstances and certain miscalculations, the publishing venture took a hit. I was perturbed but my family and friends supported me. What I saw as a mere setback took a toll on me and it took me a few months to gather my emotions and admit that: o yea.. I did take some bad decisions.  And trust me, it was not just in the case of Nivasini but the last few months have been a series of mishaps.  So taking a cue from the FailFest, here are a list of my failures in the past few months Failure #1: To control my emotions, I joined Dojo . While self ...

Padmanabha Reddy conducted a workshop on Book Writing and its stages at the wonderful Phoenix Arena. Luckily, the weather was pleasant and we could gather our thoughts and pay attention. He spoke effectively about characterization, pov and the various nuances of writing (I wished I had taken pics, too). Deeply engaging, he touched upon topics like Daily Word Count, Writing Routines... I liked how he used popular books like Alchemist, Hunger Games, Harry Potter series. Padmanabha's take on the cover pages and the techniques employed by various authors was unique. For a young author like him, I surmise it must have taken a lot of time and patience to accumulate the information. However, I could sense the apparent difference in generation gap in the reading preferences. I come from a generation of readers that thrived on books by Ruskin Bond, RK Narayan, and the like. I felt disconnected at places as I could not relate to the magical world of fantasy but the rest of the jun...

the warmth of your nasal tone brings solace to my telephone that black piece lies in the corner by the mirror, all day; it worries when its contour touches the dust of the talcum powder it mourns in silence when its mouth piece is vacant it waits for your "hello" it waits for you to stay and tell about your day It waits for me to rhyme and blurt words such as “clay” “way” “hay” But I refuse to speak. I listen like a frozen lizard that catalyses the screams of my cousin I listen like an audience of a radio show that wait endlessly for their RJ to fill their empty lives I listen like a viewer of a television show, waiting to be stunned by the worry of the day I listen to the “chik-chik” of my telephone And I know i must place down the receiver now So..till next time, “hello”

"Healing Writing" is a wonderful concept developed for empaths. I am offering "writing sessions" for teachers on this theme. The death of famous and important artists creates an unfulfilled void in our lives. The death of my paternal grandparents created a void, that i can only express in my coming books. I decided to be more artistic and more education-oriented as both my grandparents would have loved me, if i was more productive. It took me several years to get over the pain of my grandpa's death. I was happy before the news of demise of my grandmother befell on my ears. I am happy, now; satisfied too.    But the void is always there.   RIP, Nanamma.    RIP, Sridevi.    Reach out to me: niveyarao@gmail.com for any queries or thoughts on Healing Writing.

Daisy Time By Marjorie Pickthall See, the grass is full of stars, Fallen in their brightness; Hearts they have of shining gold, Rays of shining whiteness. Buttercups have honeyed hearts, Bees they love the clover, But I love the daisies' dance All the meadow over. Blow, O blow, you happy winds, Singing summer's praises, Up the field and down the field A-dancing with the daisies. source: poetry foundation

/I am writing a memoir on my publishing experiences at Nivasini Publishers (fb.com/NivasiniPublishers) and this is the first log of my memoir./ It was a warm summer in 2009 when I sent a scrap to a Orkut Poet Friend about my interest in publishing a book of poems. The idea was the poems would be from poets of the Ah! Poetry Community on Orkut. An active community of more than 25,000 members from various countries (India being the most dominant), the poets bubbled with ideas and the mentors (teacher, rather!) corrected our work. What is Ah! Poetry Community? It was a classroom, away from the regular rules and regulations of a mundane life. It was a space where we met people who were different in real life. It was a virtual hangout space where you could speak about a n y t h i n...Most importantly, you could just write and write, without the fear of being watched. The Book: After two years of deliberation, a punch on my face (grandpa's death) and most importantly, an activ...

I learnt about memoir writing in Milwaukee at the Milwaukee Writers Circle hosted by Heddy Keith and Co. I miss her and our group too. However, as an ode to her, I conducted my first session on Memoir Writing. The response was decent and many of the attendees wanted to learn more about the art form. My previous post is a summary of the presentation but attendance in person, makes a lot of difference. We used the clues and cues from the PPT, minimally. You can ask the attendees, too. I learnt these from the session: 1. The audience knows more than you They are there because their experiences in life are different and they love to learn about writing. They would not have heard a form about writing you are familiar with and that is the reason for them to be present. 2. Never kiss ass Treat your audience as adults, who function as well as you or better than you. We are all colleagues in the vast expanse of the universe and meeting each other is a privilege. I thank British Libr...