Showing posts with label WIPlash. Show all posts
Showing posts with label WIPlash. Show all posts

Monday, July 27, 2009

Possibility of Consolidated WIPlash

As per suggestions made in class, I'm going to look into the possibility of publishing a four-year consolidated edition of WIPLash with a reputed publisher. Accordingly, I'd like everyone from the previous years who hasn't submitted their story (or submitted it and took it back) to send it to me. I have the stories submitted by the 2007 batch but not 2008. Please mail me your story as soon as you can, preferably the final one but could also be classwork if you think it's good. You all have my email address since I sent you all email invites to this blog.

Saturday, July 28, 2007

Welcome 2007!

A warm (if somewhat belated) welcome to our new members, some of whom got sent invites to WIP today. WIP classes are in full swing, and we have learned numerous interesting things about each other. At least two of us for instance, are several thousand years old, and one is the sole possessor of the key to an ancient language, while another is a Tibetan princess, incognito.

Character sketches have been done, and one collective effort went like this.

A girl, let's call her Buchki, is the child of Jatra-playing parents and travels with them all over Bengal, hidning backstage to watch the performances when she's supposed to be in bed. Buchki's hero is a young boy who plays female roles, (since women do not act in the Jatra; Buchki's mother cooks, makes costumes and plays the dhol): she wants to grow up to be just like him. But he doesn't want to grow up, beause when he does, he won't be able to play women any more. So Buchki thinks up a plot to save him: she secretly takes his place.

ALSO:
Regarding WIPLash, do not despair. I am having to revert to original plan and shell out, provided the editors buck up and give me the disk (Hello? Wiz?). A thousand apologies that it has taken so long: we will do our utmost to make sure it reaches you when it gets out, so 2006 batch please mail me your addresses if you are now out of town.

Wednesday, May 02, 2007

Beleaguered WIP Book: SOS!

Firstly, my apoplogies for the delay in publishing the WIP book. May I assure you this is not due to lack of diligence on the part of the editors. We have in fact finished editing it and are doing the layout. However, we are stumped for lack of money. As I mentioned a while ago, we had been given a grant by the UPE fund for students. However, this was withdrawn without explanation. We are now looking for sponsors. Eight and a half thousand rupees will produce a very basic book, but we would like to make it a little nicer than last time, with illustrations and better lamination. so we will need something like 15 thousand. With the CAS grant to the department ending, there's no hope of money from that quarter. It looks like all avenues are closed except for private sponsorship. Any ideas?

Friday, February 09, 2007

All right, let's be having you

Who wrote the story where the ragpicker turns out to be Shiva (Bhooter Raja, I think)
Also the Great Haraldo had a story I marked WIP which I now can't remember. Send!!!!! And all the rest of you too!

Friday, February 02, 2007

Way-hay! We have mun-nay!

ALERT!!!!
We have been granted funding by the Seed Money fund to publish WIPlash. Everyone who hasn't yet sent me their stuff DO SO NOW. This includes anything I may have marked as suitable for WIP. Email of soft copy is best. If you don't have a comp, give it to me to be typeset. We will return pieces to be edited if they need polishing, or we may edit ourselves in consultation with authors. We are looking at about 80 pages of text and 20 of illustration. Deadline for texts is Feb 20th. NO EXTENSION!

we're also looking for illustrators for the stories and a cover designer. cover will be monochrome, can be grayscale. Apply to Teleute or Wiz of Az or comment this post.

Monday, November 27, 2006

95 more to go!

I have 95 copies of the old WIPLash to sell @ Rs 30 a piece. Anyone interested should contact me either online or in person. We're clearing stocks for next year's crop.

This year's WIPers, the deadline for submission of stories from this year's course will be January 31, 2007. I'll then need someone to help me edit it, preferably not a course attendee. A previous student would be ideal. If any of you read this post, please volunteer. You'll have to read the page proofs of WIPLash 2006 for errors and help with the layout. Also we would like a cover design done properly this year. The book will be about 100 pages A5 size. We should have copies in hand well before term ends so everyone gets theirs before they leave.

This is your chance to get into print.

To recap: editor and cover designer, please step forward. We'll get working on this through February, print in March and have copies out before April.

Friday, May 26, 2006

WIPlash

A thousand apologies if there are any errors, oversights or infelicities in the book. Treatment prevented me from taking as much care over it as I would have liked, and by the time it was all typeset exams were upon us and I hesitated to ask any of you to help. The important thing, I felt, was to make a fairly respectable start and to get the book out before you all dispersed. Also the whole plan of the book was an afterthought born out of a casual conversation with Supriyadi. One of the oversights (a bad one) is that I forgot to acknowledge CAS's (and Supriyadi's) support for the book, for which omission I am much mortified.
Future plans for the book: I would like to see this become a launching pad for new writers from JUDE, and to that end I would like to make it good enough to be an attractive title to commercial publishers. Since we now have the benefit of starting the next course with the thought of the book in mind, we can plan the contents from an early date. CAS won't be able to support us indefinitely, and we will have to appeal to the market at some point. To this end I'm going to tighten the requirements a little. For the first book I tried to take at least one story from everyone, since that was fair. Also, when you submitted the stories, you had no idea that they would be published (I'm sure you would have polished them up some more if you had). For the next book, there won't be automatic inclusion for everyone. I will choose the best stories regardless of who they're by, so the course-takers will have to compete to get in. I may also return stories for editing/reworking before the page makeup. A number of the stories we included this time had faults, as I'm sure you'll agree. We want to avoid that, as it pulls down the overall saleability of the work. What I would like is that after a few years of producing this book on our own, we should have some rough figures regarding sales and demand, and some high-quality back-issues, to give to a publisher along with a contract. Publishers don't like dipping their toes in untried waters, and we will have to reassure them that no piranhas are patrolling.
Also YOU will have to key in the damn things next time. Later on, when the next course has got under way, I will put up some guidelines for submission.

They're here!

The books have been delivered, and you're all going to get five free copies each. Saumava, Azeem, Pradipta and Bodhi have already got theirs. The rest of you drop by some time and pick them up; they're in my room. In addition there will be two copies in the DL. If you want extra copies, you can buy them for 30 bucks each. The books will be on sale only to JUDE.

Sunday, May 21, 2006

Books are coming from the binder's

The books are done, but probably I won't get time to haul them to JU before Thursday, as I have a course to conduct at the Geological Survey of India on Tuesday and Wednesday. (Please note: you probably won't see me in dept. on these two days.) Get in touch with me after that to collect your copies. I may need a couple of people to come with me to the printer's and help load up the car.
NOTE: The books are arriving on Friday morning, that is tomorrow. If you can't pick them up that day, I will store them in my room and you can meet me when convenient.

Sunday, May 07, 2006

Get your PDF here...

I've saved the pagemaker file of WIPlash as a pdf, which apparently I can't post on the blog, but I can send to you individually. Would you like to receive this file?
Alternatively, I can post the texts of people's stories on the blogs, or send you word versions (in case you haven't got any and I typed your stuff up from handwritten drafts). What would you like, people?

Thursday, May 04, 2006

Book of the course in press

The long wait is almost over. The book of the course, called WIPlash, has been typeset and will be okayed for printing today. I'm hoping to have copies in hand by May 15. It's 116 pages and we have a print run of 100. Here's the table of contents:
Adwaita Das
------There’s Something About Fish
Anurupa Bose
------Here Comes the Sun
Arati Banerjee
------The Birthday Treat
Bodhisatwa Dasgupta
------A Reasonable Negotiation
Hrileena Ghosh
------Quill
Ishani Dasgupta
------H2SO4
Karma Mingyur Yonzone
------I Danced Like a Bear
Lalramdini
------Weak Hearts
------The Death of Pink
Neelini Sarkar
------Illusory
------Night Whispers
Pooja Das Sarkar
------The Relic
Pradipta Sarkar
------Birthday
Rai Ganguly
------The Kaleidoscope
Romila Saha
------Of Dreams and a Twenty-Year-Old Lottery
------Of the Love of Fathers
Sandeep Philipose Mancha
------A Tale of a Towel
Saumava Mitra
------Name Imaginary
------The Seamy Side
Shaikh Azeem Hussein
------Hit
------The Train to Kolkata
Simon Andrew Jennings
------Untitled