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Each month, we give you a line from a book by an iconic female writer. Write your own story based on the cue. Get published and win goodies!
Muse of the month
Each month this year, we’ll be hosting a writing theme, with a ‘writing cue’ from an iconic female author. The 5 best entries get published here!
What you need to do:
Step 1. Read the writing cue and get inspired.
Step 2. Write your own story/narrative based on the cue. You could use it as the opening line, the closing sentence, or somewhere in between! You could choose not to use it anywhere in your story too – just write a story using the cue as a prompt. (And ‘story’ can be fictional – or not – as you wish).
Step 3. Send your story to us.
Where to send:
Send in your story to [email protected] with ‘Muse of the month’ in the subject line, and your story as a word/txt attachment. Please avoid typing the story as inline text. Do include the name we should use if we publish it, and a brief introduction to yourself (2-3 lines) in the mail.
Deadlines:
Please send in your stories by January 24th 2014. The 5 best stories will be published on Women’s Web the following week, i.e. January 27th onwards.
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– The material should be previously unpublished elsewhere.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.
GOODIES!
The 5 best entries will each win a Flipkart voucher worth Rs. 250.
Joan Didion
Joan Didion is known for her incisive, intimate novels on loss and transition, as well as for her literary journalism. She believes that writing is a process where one person (the writer) convinces another (the reader) to listen to her dream!
Didion counts Ernest Hemingway, Henry James and George Eliot among her influences. She is the author of The Year of Magical Thinking and We Tell Ourselves Stories in Order to Live: Collected Nonfiction.
And now for the writing cue!
“We tell ourselves stories in order to live”.
– from The White Album, Joan Didion
Get started with that as your inspiration, and we hope to hear from you on or before Jan 24th!
Here are the published entries, each taking off from that cue.
Shades of Orange: Deboshree writes a poignant story – of a story a young mother tells herself.
The Connoisseur: Shruthi has a funny story of the stories we make up when we need to.
Returning Home: Rajlakshmi tells a tale in which stories are all that are left, when everything else vanishes.
Stories: Deepthi narrates a story in which some forgotten stories need to remembered, and then put away
The Last Goodbye: Prasanna tells a story in which stories act as consolation – and inspiration
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I wanted to scream with excitement that my daughter chose to write about her ambition and aspirations over everything else first. To me, this was one of those parenting 'win' moments.
My daughter turned eight years old in January, and among the various gifts she received from friends and family was an absolutely beautiful personal journal for self-growth. A few days ago, she was exploring the pages when she found a section for writing a letter to her future self. She found this intriguing and began jotting down her thoughts animatedly.
My curiosity piqued and she could sense it immediately. She assured me that she would show me the letter soon, and lo behold, she kept her word.
I glanced at her words, expecting to see a mention of her parents in the first sentence. But, to my utter delight, the first thing she had written about was her AMBITION. Yes, the caps here are intentional because I want to scream with excitement that my daughter chose to write about her ambition and aspirations over everything else first. To me, this was one of those parenting ‘win’ moments.
Uorfi Javed has been making waves through social media, and is often the target of trolls. So who and what exactly is this intriguing young woman?
Uorfi Javed (no relation to Javed Akhtar) is a name that crops up in my news feeds every now and again. It is usually because she got trolled for being in some or other ‘daring’ outfit and then posting those images on social media. If I were asked, I would not be able to name a single other reason why she is famous. I am told that she is an actor but I would have no frankly no clue about her body of work (pun wholly unintended).
So is Urfi Javed (or Uorfi Javed as she prefers) famous only for being famous? How does she impact the cause of feminism by permitting herself to be objectified, trolled, reviled?
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