Muse Of The Month December 2014: Inspiration From Shashi Deshpande

Shashi Deshpande, who writes with great insight and nuance on the changing lives of Indian women and their families, is our muse of the month. Get inspired!

Each month, we ask our readers to get inspired by an iconic woman writer and funnel that into their own writing. The idea is to inspires you to read more of these writers, and also get your own writing hat on! The 5 best entries on the writing cue get published here on Women’s Web.

What you need to do

Step 1. Read the writing cue (mentioned down below) and get inspired.

Step 2. Write your own story/narrative/piece based on the cue. You could use it as the opening line, the closing sentence, or somewhere in between! You could even choose not to use it anywhere in your story – just write a story using the cue as a prompt. (And ‘story’ can be fictional – or not – as you wish).

Step 3. Send your work to us. Please email it to community@womensweb.in with ‘Muse of the month – Dec’ in the subject line, and your story as a word/txt attachment. Do include the name we should use if we publish it, and a brief introduction to yourself (2-3 lines) in the mail.

Updates: Shortlisted Entries

Here are the 5 shortlisted entries, added as we publish them, one each day, starting December 27th.

Cycle of Change, by Vijayalakshmi N: Our lives are a cycle of change, and this poem chronicles it beautifully.

 The phoenix, by Ujwala Shenoy Karmarkar: Constantly being asked to change your ways gets very tiring, very soon. Don’t succumb, rise like the phoenix, says this story.

A Reunion That Did Not Last, by Rajlakshmi Kurup: People and circumstances change, leaving relationships as only a shadow of what they once were. Here’s a story that captures this transition.

 Merry Christmas, by Shaheen Ahmed: Relationships aren’t easy, especially when they end. Here’s a moment of moving on, captured beautifully.

Deadlines

Please send in your stories by December 26th 2014, Friday, 3 p.m IST. The 5 best stories will be published on Women’s Web the next day on, i.e. one each from December 27th to the 31st.

Rules

• The material should be previously unpublished elsewhere. (Copyright stays with you and you’re free to subsequently publish it elsewhere).

• Keep it between 250 and 800 words. (Please keep this in mind; in past editions, we have had to disqualify some good entries purely due to word count issues).

• Please avoid typing the story as inline text. Send it as an attachment only.

Prizes

The 5 best entries will each win a Flipkart voucher worth Rs. 250.

Muse of the month (December 2014)

Shashi Deshpande is an author whose work is set around people and situations that seem intimately familiar to most readers; she explores the world of close-knit Indian families, comfortable yet often claustrophobic and teeming with hidden dangers. Her characters face situations that could be the lot of everywoman, making them deeply identifiable for many readers.

Winner of the Padma Shri and Sahitya Akademi awards, her oeuvre includes nine published novels, besides children’s books, essays and short stories.

Cue for December 2014

“It’s astonishing how we comment on change, as if change is something remarkable. On the contrary, not to change is unnatural, against nature.”  – from Shashi Deshpande’s That Long Silence. Make sure to get your entry in on or before December 26th 2014, Friday, 3 p.m IST

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