The idea itself came up while commenting on the collaborative writing and illustrating event by Pratham Books. It went unnoticed till Pratham Books retweeted this ‘Anyone willing to join in creating a story for kids on twitter using illustration from @prathambooks website? How abt flickr.com/photos/pratham… ‘. Five or six twitter folks showed interest out of which four agreed to join the experiment. A methodology was quickly chalked out and we started off.
Since I had started the ball rolling, I wanted this to reach completion. Since this was one of those cases where participants had just met and had no relationship with each other, there was a high possibility that the exercise could be abandoned midway by the participants. I didn’t want that to happen. Putting myself up in public eye does not come naturally to me. I prefer to work from shadows. And then to face failure – it was something that I wanted to avoid. Luckily the participants stuck through till the end and in fact, we even gained one new writer.
For a long time I have wanted to become a storyteller for kids. The idea of having good story telling session in a book store/library on a regular basis really appeals to me. Not knowing if I had the skill to weave stories for tiny tots which would ignite their imagination and keep them enthralled, kept the idea on backburner. And then this opportunity came. I started off, digging into all that I remembered about my time with cousins and things that fascinated them. I surprised myself in a good way. I admired the imagination of other participants and I reveled/laughed/giggled at the way story was proceeding. If the fear of not completing the story was not there, I would have wanted this madness to go on longer.
Should we do this again? Any takers?
The experience of writing collaborative story on twitter