BOOK WRITING PROJECT
APRIL 15, 2013 – APRIL 17, 2013  

A Book Writing Project has been launched in the four schools of Takshila Educational Society, in collaboration with ‘Quill Club Writers’, a company headed by Mr Hemant Kumar and Ms. Ruchira Mittal. The idea of the project is to commercially produce and publish a book containing short stories that are written by our own students from DPS Patna, Pune, Ludhiana and Coimbatore. The Book Writing Project is a five months’ long activity during which potential talent amongst our students will be identified and then aided to create stories worthy of getting published.For this very purpose, the facilitators, Mr. Hemant Kumar and Ms Ruchira Mittal who are also motivational speakers, writers and publishers in their own right, visited the school from April 15th to 17th 2013 and after some serious and funfilled story spinning sessions with the students have finally selected a core group , whom they are going to guide and mentor in writing and publishing stories.The Book Writing Project was set in motion with a short assembly which was organised to welcome the guests and facilitators, Mr. Hemant Kumar and Mrs Ruchira Mittal and also to brief the students about the project. Thereafter the facilitators were invited to speak and they enlightened the students about the magnitude of the project in its wide range which involves all the processes from imagining, writing, editing to publishing and eventually seizing this golden opportunity to become short story writers of acclaim at this young age. The recently published book titled ‘The Rainbow’, an anthology of short stories written by the students of DPS Jaipur was also shown to the students. The first round of selection comprised of a short writing task which was undertaken by all students from classes VI to XII. The selection of the students for the second round was tough but those endowed with the finest flair for writing made it to the second round.Day 2 of the Book Writing Project commenced with the second round of screening which was again a writing task. 250 students who had been short listed after the first round participated in this exercise. The students were divided into two groups of Classes VI – IX and Classes X – XII. Both the groups were given story starters which they had to develop and progress into potential stories. The story starter given to classes VI – IX was “He stood for a second at the iron gates, which were open and in he went….” The story starter given to classes X – XII was “A girl sees her new Professor for the first time and realizes that she has seen him before – in handcuffs”. The final shortlisted students numbering thirty one were interviewed exhaustively by the Facilitators on the third day. As difficult as the selection was, yet the facilitators zeroed in on eight potential writers ranging from classes VIII to XI. It can be safely concluded that the three day visit of the Facilitators of the Book Writing Project set off a positive and fruitful vibrancy amongst the students with many a potential writer harbouring dreams to make it to the book.