Feature

Creative writing at Presidency University

Kazi Sarmad Karim

At a young age I found that I had a certain skill in writing when my poem was selected for publication in the school yearbook. Considering the number of students in my class, and indeed in my whole school, it was quite an achievement. I was only 8 years old at the time and the poem I had written was “What I want to become when I grow up”. I was at a very impressionable age then, so in the poem I wanted to be an astronaut, but if you ask me today I would tell you I would like to be a writer.

I always used to write a lot on account of being a voracious reader. I used to read anything that I could find; so much so that I believe it is the reason I eventually had to wear glasses. Mostly, I like to write short stories and poems. But, until my Bachelors degree, I never had any formal training in writing; it just came to me naturally. Having said that, last year I attended a one-month intensive course on Creative Writing, conducted by Dr. Patrick Dougherty of University of Hyogo, Japan, which definetly enriched my writing output in terms of creativity. The lucky thing was that the course was conducted at my university, Presidency University.

The effect this course has had on anything to do with my writing skills is incalculable. After completing this course, I felt rejuvenated with new vigor and passion. The thing about Dr. Patrick was that he made classroom-learning fun. At the beginning of each class, he used to come in and write down three quotes on the board. Then he asked us to share our views about the quotes, and the first 15 minutes of every class was spent discussing different quotes from a multitude of sources. In this way, his classes were always enlightening for the participants. Through this exercise I learnt to appreciate and critique other people's viewpoints. But, and this is one important thing Dr. Patrick taught us, 'critique' does not always mean negative. We usually take the term to have a negative connotation, but moderated in the right way it can be very helpful for 'budding' writers like me to find out their bad habits and work to iron them out.

In Dr. Patrick's course I also learnt the importance of letting ideas flow while writing the first draft of a piece, and the need for editing. At the end of each class, he gave us a passage to read and Reading Report exercises to be completed and handed in the next class. The Reading Report consisted of 3 points: express main ideas of the passage in three points, summarize the whole passage in one sentence and to identify two new or interesting words from the passage. Through this exercise Dr. Patrick taught us how to find out if a piece of writing is coherent or not. I also learnt a technique to prune out and tighten my writing.

Regarding testing the students Dr Pat's strategy is 'not to shock' the students. That is a very good thing according to me. It doesn't mean his exams are easy, just that if you attend all of his classes and listen attentively to what he says you have a pretty good chance of acing his exams. One very important thing I learned from Dr. Pat about writing is that it's okay to break the rules. But to break the rules, as he stressed, one must know the rules first! So, he acquainted us with the rules regarding major writing forms, such as poems, short stories, plays and screenplays. Then he encouraged us to break them. It was definitely a brilliant idea by Dr. Pat because, speaking from personal experience, if you want to innovate and write in your own style you have to know the norms before you can subvert them.

Now, I know what a lot of people are thinking -- a creative writing course. What is the need for it? I would definitely beg to differ. I am so glad that I did the course with Dr. Pat. Without it my evolution as a writer would have been impossible. I was definitely lucky to be able to attend Dr. Pat's second one-month creative writing course conducted in February 2007. The last time we focused on poems and short stories, but this time we focused on short stories and screenplays. The best part of it definitely has been that those of us who participated in the course are now internationally published authors! Yes, thanks to the efforts of Dr. Pat our writings have been published as an anthology of young Bengali writers writing in English. The title of the book is “Deshi Dreams”, and the book was published by Trafford Publishing. Dr. Pat has also assured us that our output this time will also be collected together and published as well.

The only thing I dislike about Dr. Pat's course is its length. Why is it that good things always come in small doses? I would, and I am sure the other participants would agree, love the length of the course to be longer. If we could attain enough writings to publish a whole book in only one month, think what could be done if the time limit was longer. Last, but certainly not least I have to say that the students are as good as the teacher can make them. A teacher has to know 'how to extract' the required extract from the student, and at that nobody is better than Dr. Pat. The best compliment I can give him is that he makes his classes seem so enjoyable that, while in other classes students usually can't wait for it to end, in his classes students can't wait for the class to get started and do not want it to end.