Creative quest                                                       
Realise and nurture talent before it’s late

Can we call the various traditional forms of writing we get exposed to, while in school, creative writing? The conventional forms are the compositions and the letters. We are also taught to write messages, telegrams, notices, and create posters. As far as the majority of schools go there is no separate training for creative writing. Inherent talent gets appreciated in class as we go along and that’s all we’ll ever make out about the worth of our skills. Sometimes we get opportunities to participate in inter-school essay writing competitions and this may help us discover our creativity at the individual level.

Currently, we donc’t get to see a prescribed version of creative writing at the K-12 level except as part of the elective English course. At the commercial level, there are mostly individuals who take shots at teaching students the basics of creative writing during the school breaks. A formal effort is available in a very limited and confined way. It’s available when it’s almost too late…only when one has completed one’s schooling. I believe that some efforts should be made at the nascent levels itself to realise and nurture talent.

In the literal sense, ‘creative’ means imaginative, resourceful, artistic, inspiring etc. I would like to quote something from Sanskrit here, “Sa Vidhya Ya Vimukhthaye”, which means ‘Education is that which liberates’… I found it most inspiring in the context. For a budding writer, words are a liberating form and creative writing focuses on a person’s

self expression. Also, creative writing should not be restricted to the ambit of those pursuing the specified English course. I have come across many writers who have pursued varied vocations but have chosen to write to stage their flights of fancy either concurrently with their mainline of work or as a dedicated course of action.

As a child, when I tried to go through the newspaper, I always imagined my story to be there, I used to wonder about stories that would gain their way through to the pages of the newspaper. Consequently, if you have the desire to express yourself, I believe that you should just pick up a piece of paper and write down whatever comes to your mind.

The subject matter could be just about anything. People write ranging from their pet peeves to their favourite quests.

The more you write the more will you gain in confidence. The typical formats that you will find in a creative writing course are about writing short stories, novels, novellas, poems, screenwriting, playwriting, autobiographies, memoirs, personal and journalistic essays, flash fiction, collaborative writing etc. This spells out a systematic approach to something which we have consciously desired to pursue as a profession. But this can only come at the second stage; the first stage is to set your inner thoughts free! Nothing like a free reign of imagination — many a poets are born this way.

The trick is to try to write on topics which are both familiar as well as unfamiliar. Have a loose structure of writing. Start by writing on something which you like the most. It could be a person, a movie, a game, a gizmo, a concept or anything under the sun. You can give it to your teacher or share it with your friends or parents. Get your first review from them. Keep in mind some sort of structure. You could follow a very simple form of construction. You could do with the standard one of introduction, body and conclusion or you could begin with the conclusion and end with something else. This is the time for experimentation.