In this episode of Cutting Chai Stories, Jayati speaks with Stephanie Bourbon, a veteran of the National Novel Writing Month challenge in November, also known as NaNoWriMo, who has done the challenge 16 times. Now she helps female writers write their own novels. 

For the entire month, Stephanie is offering Letters for NaNoWriMo, absolutely free! Every day she will email writers with support, encouragement, writing tips, and prompts to help them complete their novel in a month with support. (You can still sign up!)

Stephanie talks about the problem most writers face, her philosophy of writing, and helpful tools for writers with dyslexia. 

Sign up for her daily letters here: https://www.stephaniebourbon.com/nanowrimo-letters-from-me

She is also offering a free PDF workbook, How to Write a Novel in 30 Days, available here: https://www.stephaniebourbon.com/how-to-write-a-novel-in-30-days 

Follow her on Instagram @stepholivieribourbon

Recently she launched a mini-version of her course called, From Nothing to Novel, focusing on going from the blank page to the finished draft in just 30 days. The full version of this course will be available for enrollment on April 1, 2021.

Welcome to Cutting Chai Stories with Jayati Vora. In today's episode, I talk about the opposite of a cutting chai story -- that is, how to stretch a story like a rubber band. While most of my episodes feature short stories under a 100 words long, sometimes that word count can be limiting. So how do you take one small moment and expand on it, make it interesting to your listener or reader, and keep them hooked? Listen to the episode to find out. 

My creative writing classes for children are open for registration for the November session; the topic of the month is Fairy Tales. Register your kids here: https://www.gumroad.com/cuttingchaistories

I tease a writing class for entrepreneurs in this episode; email me for more information and to be put on the founding members' list. 

Welcome back to Season 2 of Cutting Chai Stories with Jayati Vora, a short-form podcast dedicated to breaking down the mysteries of writing. Every Thursday, I'll be bringing you a short story, teaching you some of the techniques used, and giving you a writing prompt to write a story of your own. This season, for the first time, I'll also be exploring how to use those writing techniques in writing for your business -- that is, copy you can use as an entrepreneur. 

Episode 1 is all about the rule of threes: what it is, how to recognize it, and why you should make it an essential part of your writing repertoire. Thanks so much to Diane Stinnett for sharing her story with us! Diane is a graphic designer and social media manager from Louisville, Kentucky, who is rediscovering the passion for writing that she says got lost somewhere in her 20s. She was one of many writers who participated in my July 2020 #astoryaday writing challenge in my Cutting Chai Stories Facebook group. This story is from that period. I hope it inspires you to write your own. 

If you liked this episode and want to continue the conversation elsewhere, join the party in my Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/cuttingchaistories

My creative writing classes for children (7-10 years) begin again in November; the theme is fairy tales. Register here: https://www.gumroad.com/cuttingchaistories

Follow Diane on her Facebook page, Running Lessons, here: https://www.facebook.com/runninglessons

Listen for a sneak peek into Season 2 of Cutting Chai Stories with Jayati Vora, coming October 22nd, 2020.

Helloooooo! I made you a bonus episode because I missed you so much and I wanted to let you know I haven't forgotten about you. This one is all about sound words, or, if you want to sound fancy: onomatopoeias. Listen to the spooky story my 9-year-old student from Texas, Hansika Shankar, wrote, and learn how she used sound words to chilling effect. 

Coming soon: Season 2! Stay tuned!

And if you can't wait till then, follow me on Instagram @jayativora (https://www.instagram.com/jayativora/) or join me and a growing group of writers in my Facebook group, Cutting Chai Stories (https://www.facebook.com/groups/cuttingchaistories), where I share writing prompts that don't get shared in my podcast!

Also, I'm doing some exciting new things in this hiatus between seasons that I can't wait to tell you about! More soon.  

In this bonus episode of Cutting Chai Stories, I share with you two stories written by 11-year-old Yukta Thirumalai, a student in one of my creative writing classes for kids. The theme of the month was perspective, and for the last class of the month, I asked my students to write a story based on a prompt I gave them -- and then to flip the perspective and tell the same story from the point of view of another character. Yukta's stories were so good I just had to share them with you, so I made this bonus episode so you could listen to them. 

In announcements, my creative writing classes for September are available now; the session starts next week and we'll be covering poetry. Register at my website: https://www.gumroad.com/cuttingchaistories

I am also planning something for adults, but it's not ready to be unveiled yet. In the meantime, I am, however, taking on clients FREE OF COST. I only have spots for a few, but if you're a baby entrepreneur -- that is, if you've launched your business within the last two or three years, and if you struggle with writing for work, ping me at cuttingchaistories AT gmail DOT com and let's see if we're a match to work together!

More about Yukta: Yukta is a 11-year-old who lives near Washington D.C. She loves art, writing, eating, anything soft and cuddly (pandas among them). She dislikes waking up early, hiking, and being told what to do! She blogs at https://yarningforwords.wordpress.com/.

In this, the last episode of Season 1 of Cutting Chai Stories with Jayati Vora, I speak again with Nadine Kenney Johnstone (if you missed it, check out her interview with me last week on episode 19). Nadine is the author of the memoir Of This Much I'm Sure, writing coach and writing professor, and on episode 20, she generously takes us through a thought exercise designed to have you visualizing what you want to write before you ever pick up your notebook, helping greatly with the common problem of writer's block. Grab a pen or a laptop before you listen, pause as and when you need to, and spin the mental exercise out for as long as you need--by the end of it, you'll have constructed a whole scene in your head, with setting, characters, dialogue, and more. 

This is the last episode of Season 1, it's true, but I'll probably pop in here for a bonus episode or two before we get to Season 2. In the meantime, do keep in touch via Instagram (I'm at @jayativora) or in my Facebook group, also called Cutting Chai Stories. 

Thank you to all of you who have been listening, all of you who wrote to me, all of you who came on my podcast to share your energy and wise words with my listeners!

To learn more about Nadine, you can visit her website: nadinekenneyjohnstone.com

Connect with her on Instagram:@nadinekenneyjohnstone

1. Everything in your life is fair game.

Join me on episode 19 of Cutting Chai Stories with Jayati Vora as I speak with Nadine Kenney Johnstone, author of the memoir Of This Much I'm Sure, writing coach and writing professor. She talks about how she turned her painful experience with IVF into a book; what is joy journaling; and introduces the story workshop method. (If you're intrigued by this method, stay tuned for next week's episode, which is also the last episode of Season 1 of Cutting Chai Stories, for a more in-depth exercise.) More on Nadine below!

My August session of creative writing classes for kids is now open. The theme is how to write description. Check out the classes at https://www.gumroad.com/cuttingchaistories

If you want Nadine's recommendations for good memoirists and examples of the story workshop method, check out:

Mary Karr

To learn more about Nadine, you can visit her website: nadinekenneyjohnstone.com

She is also doing visualization and writing sessions every Monday at 12 p.m. CST; sign up for her Writer Workout Membership between Aug 18 and 24  here.

In episode 18 of Cutting Chai Stories with Jayati Vora, we talk about how to create a mood with your writing. How do you create a different state of mind in your readers that wasn't there before? It's the kind of thing that I think is easier to do with more abstract forms of art, such as music, or dance, or the fine arts. Words can sometimes be more black and white. 

It's easier to show than tell. Let's look at a mood piece around the prompt of homesickness by Laura Ambler, who used to work in retail but is now exploring her creative side from the foot of the Rocky Mountains in Colorado. I can break it down for you, but there's no recipe here--take five sentences, add a dash of alliteration and a sound word or two, and that's it, you have a mood piece. You have to figure it out for yourself. The best I can do is show you how she did it. 

You can connect with Laura on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/creatingyourcommunity/ and on her podcast, also called Creating Community.

Also, my August creative writing classes for kids are now open; the theme is how to use description in your writing. More information here: https://www.gumroad.com/cuttingchaistories

Finally, if you like this podcast, if you find it useful, if you look forward to the writing prompts, do me a favor? Please rate and review it so that others can also discover it. I'd be so grateful and you'd be helping to expand the Cutting Chai Stories community!

NOTE: Apologies to my listeners who listened to the initial episode I uploaded, the two tracks were overlaid with a slight mismatch, resulting in some crosstalk. I fixed it, and uploaded a cleaner version here. Sorry again!

This episode of Cutting Chai Stories with Jayati Vora features part 2 of my interview with journalism mentor and prolific writer of books for adults and children, Jerry Pinto. Make sure to catch part one of our conversation in episode 16!

Jerry talks about writing colloquially, hitting up against the "wall of grammar" and how children can smell an agenda from a mile away. He dismantles the messages sometimes coded in children's books, and writing with simplicity while exploring a complexity of emotion. If all writers learned from children's books, he says, that would be a good thing for the state of literature.

The book he talks about (the fart story in the title) is Phiss Phuss Boom: https://www.amazon.in/Phiss-Phuss-Boom-Stories-Grandparents/dp/9383331089/ref=sr_1_48?dchild=1&qid=1593988241&refinements=p_27%3Ajerry+Pinto&s=books&sr=1-48

You can follow Jerry Pinto on Instagram @mahimkajerry: https://www.instagram.com/mahimkajerry/?hl=en