Hazia’s Reflections

 We had our writing group discussion yesterday. Again we had 4 people turned up, 2 different ones though. It was a good discussion. I shared ‘From the Grave’, my 2nd corner story of you-know-who. They all like the romance and soapy theme, even asked me to change the title to something more romantic. Hmm… One even said she was amazed with my creativity to make up the investigative bit and how the main character tracked down the guy. LOL! If only she knew; I didn’t make it up, it was real life.

After that, we dropped by at my instructor’s place. The class was still on. Last week when I dropped by, he was finished and we had a long talk. He had 3 old participants for this batch, it was tough. 2 of them are Singaporeans and they are actually travelling back and fro every Saturday for this.

When he introduced me that day, they started firing one question after another. Example: Who’s your favourite author ( I couldn’t answer), whom do you emulate, is your style influenced by anybody (Nobody, I’m still experimenting, I don’t have  a distinct style yet), you don’t work (hello, it’s the weekend and my biodata on the cover of the book clearly explained my career), etc.

My instructor told them that 1 great thing about our book is that: a) there’s nothing stereotype about its characters and b) there’s nothing stereotype about the 3 of us (authors), we are funny people, LOL! He quoted the new generation of Indian authors who write to cater to the Western market. The theme revolves very much on migration. Very stereotypical.

He said I shouldn’t have a favourite author at this stage, it signifies trouble. We should just enjoy all good writing, regardless of the author. He emphasised about reading a lot again, both good and bad work. Oh, 1 tip, try mixing 2 genres in 1 story.