Still--and Always--a Fledgling Cheryl Rao cherb...@gmail.com
I didn't set out to be a children's writer. I had other things on my mind in my teens and twenties. I had to grow up, go out, compete in the academic or business world, embark on a career, climb the organizational ladder, etc. And I did--working first as a lecturer and then in a bank. But then something happened that changed my life completely and turned everything I believed in, career-wise, upside down. It's been happening to women from the beginning of Time but somehow, for me, it was the greatest miracle possible: I became a mother. And everything else now came second. (In later years I read a lot about post-partum depression and how protracted it can be00and there I was with an prolonged attack of extreme post-partum euphoria, and I must admit that over two-and-a-half decades down the line, it still persists.) So, I resigned from the bank and set off on this great adventure of bringing up a child. I was told I was being ridiculous. I could take a year off and then get back to work, like most others did. I was warned that I'd soon get tired of 'sitting at home' and would seek the workplace again. But somehow that didn't happen. Because, late at night when the baby was asleep, I started writing: slice-of-life articles and short stories for adults. I wrote in longhand, in pencil, so that I could erase and re-word and polish my prose until it was time to pull out that old Royal portable typewriter and hammer at the keys. In those days, everything went by post. We lived in military cantonments with Army Post Office (APO) addresses, so replies, acceptances, or rejections took a long time to reach me--as did the cheques that came my way for these articles and stories. Everything was addressed care of my husband and went to his office--and it annoyed me no end that he got to know the fate of my work before I did! Meanwhile, my son passed infancy and became a delightful toddler. We spent his waking hours haunting the small parks nearby with our stately German shepherd--and we talked. It was a never-failing source of delight to find that my son actually hung on to my words and clamoured for my stories... and soon became insatiable for them. Naturally, we soon exhausted the stocks in the Army library, the books in my collection, and the fund of tales that my mother had told me of her childhood in Hubli with a large family and a close knit community. So what choice did I have but to start creating stories for him? My son was not a hard taskmaster. I used settings he was familiar with and characters he could identify with. If he didn't like something in the story we would change it around, if he disapproved of the ending we would work it out to suit his tastes. "If he likes my stories," I thought, "why not try a larger audience?" So, I took the next logical step and wrote a few stories and sent them to *Children's World* (the monthly magazine of the Children's Book Trust) for consideration--and that's when the going got tough. The stories were not snapped up. I was not told that I was an indigenous Enid Blyton or a Roald Dahl in the making. (This was the early 1990s, before J.K. Rowling conquered the world...) But, instead of a simple rejection, one of those that say 'No' very politely, I got a long letter from the editor at that time, Ms Vaijayanti Tonpe. She went over all the aspects of the stories I had submitted: subject, characters, events, language, etc., gave me detailed feedback on what could work and what wouldn't and asked me to try again. That letter was the best thing that happened to me in terms of my first steps in children's writing. I went back to those first two stories but realized that they were pretty much beyond retrieval, so they were tossed out and I wrote another short story, this time going for a topic that was close to my heart--our German shepherd--and imagining the rest. It worked. The story was accepted. (It took a long time, however--not because of the publisher, but because we had shifted from one end of the country to somewhere midway-- where the long and sure arm of the APO eventually found us.) "This is so much fun!" I thought. "Mother and son and dog out together; we have our little encounters; a patch of green becomes the prairies, a mound grows into a mountain, a puddle could surely be the ocean--there's no limit to where we can take our imaginations...!" Thus, I started writing regularly for children--and gradually reduced my writing for adults (though I never gave that up). After a couple of years of fairly regular short story contributions to *Children's World*, Ms Tonpe wrote to me again. "Why don't you try your hand at a long serial story?" she asked. That was all I needed. I gave it a try; and then took my courage in both hands and wrote a children's book. By now, we were in yet another military cantonment, and I set the story there, brought in all the history and adventure my son and I were so fond of--and bravely posted the manuscript off to the Children's Book Trust. Very soon, the next story started coming alive in my head--and serendipitously, I saw a notice of HarperCollins' Indus Peacock imprint in the newspaper. I cut out the notice, completed the story, and sent it off. Both the books were accepted and slowly I began to actually think of myself as a fledgling children's writer. More books followed. Many more short stories. Some were included in anthologies, a couple in textbooks in Denmark and Sweden. It sounds wonderful, doesn't it? That's because I've left out one important thing. A fact of life for a writer. Rejection. There were plenty of rejections. There were even acceptances that were thereafter re-considered and then returned to me with the usual polite note. There were long, long waits and some stories that just 'fell through the cracks' and never surfaced again. Of course, rejection is tough. But it makes a writer tough--and it also compels a writer to do some homework and think about why the story fell short or why it didn't suit that particular publisher. Of course, I get dejected--sometimes for days on end, wondering why I ever imagined I could be a writer. But the moment another story starts growing in my head, I snap out of it and hope that the introspection and the lessons learnt from the last rejection will make the next story better. In the late-1990s, I put down roots in Hyderabad. Information technology was booming. The process of writing changed and pencils and paper were discarded and the computer took over. I met another children's writer, Gita Iyengar, who roped me in to facilitate creative writing workshops for children. For me, it was a question of simply 'passing it on' and encouraging budding writers to believe in themselves the way Ms Tonpe had done years earlier for me. I continued to write short stories and books for children, including picture books and text books and a series of creative writing workbooks for children (Fun with Creative Writing). By this time, there were many more children's publishers in the country and they were more easily accessible via the Internet and email. Everything was faster. But it didn't get easier for me because, once my son grew up and left home for college and a career, I had no young person to whet my stories. Perforce, I had to travel back in time: and thus I froze somewhere around the age of eleven and now I look at life from that perspective. Everything is so much more colourful when viewed through the eyes of a child. And there are stories everywhere. I was lucky that my mother had been a great storyteller and my father had lived a life of adventure and danger in the Forest Department and then the Police Service. My husband's career as an Army officer took us to small towns that formed wonderful settings for stories of adventure and mystery. My brother still lives in a farmhouse and his environs are a constant source of tales. And of course, all through, there was my son and our beloved German shepherd to provide inspiration. So, it wasn't just one person sitting at a keyboard churning out stories. It was three generations and all its branches working together. True, I didn't set out to be a children's writer. Certainly, I will always be a fledgling, constantly learning and experimenting. But there is nothing else I want to be. --------------------------------------------------------- Goan by birth, Hyderabadi by location, canine at heart, Cheryl would like to stay frozen at 11-going-on-12 to continue to write for her age group, books published by the Children's Book Trust, Mango Books, Tulika, Ponytale, Pratham, Cambridge University Press, etc. Her email: cherb...@gmail.com This is an excerpt from the book From Mind to Keyboard (Goa,1556, 2016, edited by Sheela Jaywant). The book is available via Golden Heart Emporium, Rua Abade Faria, Margao.