The date for our next reading has tentatively been set for Sunday, May 24 2008. Venues will be announced once we’ve received confirmation. If you’re in Islamabad and you want to participate, please begin sending in your pieces to readings@desiwriterslounge.net. While we cannot promise that your work will be read out, given the time limitations we have, you are encouraged to participate nonetheless, if not in a reading capacity then in a listening and critiquing one. Our readings are more along the lines of workshops, so if you’re interested (and keeping this in mind), drop us a line.

Readings are planned throughout the summer with a six week lapse between each which means late May, late June-early July and late August.

The second reading in the series will have time lines and specific durations for which a piece can be read and critiqued, to ensure that we can fit in at the very least, three pieces in one sitting including breaking for tea.

Though this has not been promoted as such, as our other readings have been planned, we will still be announcing the venue, time and date of the reading on both this blog and the main website. So if you’re interested in participating in whatever capacity, please email us by May 17th so we can make the necessary arrangements.

That’s it.

– TPTB.

We’ve found a solution to the prose problem: regular columns. The columns authors may or may not change with every new issue, thereby bringing new voices to the fold. In any case, having columns will bring something new to the e-zine issues laid out thus far.

A thread has been opened in the forums for brainstorming. We’re hoping for columns a little outside of the run of the mill content that’s usually housed in local magazines and newspapers, catering for the writing crowd. Also things that aren’t restricted to Pakistan; given that our members range from India, Bangladesh, Saudi Arabia and other parts of the South Asian area. For that matter, we’ve been getting hits from as far as France, England, Iceland (one of our members resides there…he isn’t desi, for the record) etc. So content needs to be written with that in mind.

If you have any ideas up your sleeve and are a member, head on over to the forums. Chances are, you were on the receiving end of a member wide email with the URL to the discussion thread, included. If you aren’t a member and would still like in on the brainstorming, post your ideas and suggestions in the comments and we’ll credit you if the idea gains approval.

Meanwhile, the follow up reading’s still somewhere up ahead. We’ve decided to have readings every six weeks, instead of every month. This way, it’ll be a little easier for the moderators/organizers to set things up nicely as well as ensure maximum participation. It’s generally acknowledged May’s the time when most people have taken their respective exams. No dates have been finalized yet. However, when they are announced they will be done so both here as well as on our main website. If anyone’s interested to attend as a reader, send in your stuff and we’ll select which pieces will be read out and discussed in detail. From previous experience, we’ve seen the most we can do is 4 pieces. This time, we’ll need to set a time limit to discuss each piece so we can then move on and try to cover more.

So as always, if you’re interested send in your stuff at readings@desiwriterslounge.net and we’ll email you back if your work’s a confirmed read. Whether or not your work is selected for the reading, we encourage you to attend the event nonetheless. This isn’t a closed event, although we’re not marketing it beyond the blog and website. The third or fourth readings will be broadcasted more broadly.

Meanwhile, post away in the comments.

I’ve been getting feedback from a few members that they haven’t been able to generate activity on the forums, because they haven’t been able to log in. It seems a web host change is absolutely imminent, now that we’ve determined for absolute surety that it’s definitely our host and not broadband/Internet connections.

This problem will hopefully be resolved within the next 1-2 weeks or so, as we prepare to make the transition from one server to the next. The site and forums will be shut down from anywhere between 24 to 48 hours, since all information and data will be moved from one host to the next.

We’ll keep you abreast of all things here, because once we go offline this is the only place members can be kept abreast of what’s going on.

– TPTB

This past quarter’s seen a few leap frog movements, especially when it’s come to e-zine selection. While the editor still gets dibs on what goes and what doesn’t, I will be working with the subs to iron out any issues faced in the editing process. That’s an old issue ironed out.

Next up, I’m realizing that right about this time the forums are going to die on us a little bit and come summer when everyone who’s still studying (be it O/A-levels, undergrad, grad, etc) and still responsible for taking exams, is otherwise engaged. Things will free up come May/June/July/August when the summer comes in full swing. Unfortunately, e-zine selection will also take place around that time, and we’re running short on valid prose pieces featured. While we’ve got a ton of great poetry, we’re falling behind in the prose department and this wide deficiency might push us to scale back on the number of issues originally forecast. So instead of having a quarterly ‘zine, we might have two bi-annual issues instead. We’ll be covering the same amount of ground i.e. four months, but the two extra months will be left to selection and editing, thus moving around our schedules.

An active campaign needs to be launched to deal with this; otherwise we can’t expect much improvement in terms of diversity and quality if the same batch of members keep posting. I believe a memberwide email may be helpful in this case, especially when it comes to the dormant crowd who for reasons unknown, have joined but who have never played an active role to date, much less logged into their accounts! It kinda makes you wonder, doesn’t it? They’ve all had very valid reasons for registering as well.

I suppose at the end of the day, we’re going to get tired by the apparent lack of commitment being shown by our dormant members, who seem to have registered on the community because it’ll look “cool”. Look, ma! See how intellectual we are? If that’s the reason, this member at least, will be hanging up the administrator’s apron to brighter futures and greener pastures.

We’re all human, after all.

Lately, we’ve been facing a little lag in activity on the Forums, and more particularly in the prose department. Judging by our last e-zine issue, where only one short story made the cut, and was completely dominated by poetry, it’s clear that the Desi Writers Lounge members are falling in one key aspect: prose.

So this is a call out to all prosesters out there, interested in feedback and critique (much like a workshop environment), who can give as well as receive, and who are interested in having their work featured in the quarterly e-zine. Submissions are open until late May, upon which the following 1-2 months will be dedicated to selecting the finalists, and assigning them their editors.

If you’re interested, and you’re not a member yet, sign up and start posting…it’s the only way to really be heard.

What…you don’t know that by now?

🙂

TPTB

I was informed earlier today, that GreenWhite.org (a website that covers Start Ups and other local companies) recently wrote an article about the ‘Lounge. It’s a huge heads up in our direction, since the site does attract a lot of visitors who, it seems, have extra curricular activities that match up with what we provide, so we’ve had a few new membership requests after that. It’s a step in the right direction.

It was quite an accidental thing, not to mention! Happy accidents, I suppose.

Meanwhile, branching out of the Lounge, and heading into the blogosphere to scout out prospective new talent. Yes, I am that evil! There’s a lot of untapped talent out there, especially in the desi realm, who could benefit from the ‘Lounge and be a benefit for the ‘Lounge as well. We’re all about…well…you can read the details here.

– TPTB

The email was sent out yesterday evening, confirming the time, venue and general format of the reading. Looks like this thing’s really happening, one way or the other. It seems bookmarks will not be on our agenda for this first reading, although there are still in consideration as a part of the general theme.

So for those of you who’re attending, it’s a brilliant opportunity to really showcase your work, who you are and of course, get to know the people behind the Lounge so to speak. Here’s to hoping that the first one is successful and that we can continue building up a following, and get to our eventual goal: a more broader sense of literary awareness, beginning from Islamabad and branching out to various other cities of Pakistan, and wherever else our membership resides and are able to commit to something like this on a vast scale.

Meanwhile, am considering outsourcing work for our fliers, posters and bookmarks externally so if there’s anyone out there who knows any talented designer who’s willing to help us out (you will be compensated for your services, obviously), that’d be a really brilliant heads up. Meanwhile, I’ll move forward on getting this thing launched and out there as soon as possible. Remember, if anyone know any local designer that’s based in Islamabad or Lahore, give us a heads up at comments@desiwriterslounge.net or readings@desiwriterslounge.net. We’d really, really appreciate it and of course, the ideal situation is meeting up with the designer locally, as opposed to the long distance communication that outsourcing often yields. But we need someone pronto, as in the next 1-2 weeks. I can stretch it to 2 1/2 weeks, but nothing beyond that. You have our mailing information, so…

We are moving with full steam towards our reading and the other little event we’ve got planned, the details of which we’ll announce at the reading, and once that’s done on this blog and the website as a collective. It will be our first event on a large scale. Apparently, when we decided to take the Lounge out of its online context, we really meant it!

Adios for now,

The Powers That Be

A little clarification here: the reason we haven’t let our members know where, when and how is because our venue changed on us at the last minute. It turns out the area we were going to host it in is under construction. So we’re trying to find a place fast and quick. But don’t worry we will find a place, and the emails will go out and we will have this thing, damn it! 🙂

Meanwhile, I’d advise you to take a trip to the forums. Turns out we might not have many readers, but we’ll have our listeners. Sigh. Oh well, perhaps next time then? When we open up things to the public? I am hopeful.

For whatever reason, I have hope.

The last several posts have all dealt with, in some way, the rapidly approaching reading which because yours truly now has the engagement party of a very, very old school friend to attend, has been bumped forward by a day. It was scheduled for March 30th and has now been shifted to the evening of March 29th, 2008 (just in case, you forget the year apparently!) which happens to be a Saturday. It was either that or pushing it forward by an entire week, not an option because many people are steadily being confirmed for the event. Including the three standard moderators, we may now have have 7 or 8 other participants bringing it to a total of 10-11 which is great, because we weren’t expecting many. My fellow moderator thought it would be just the three of us; I was a tad more optimistic and hoped for at least 5. I’ve always been good at the guessing game…but wait until we have the event and someone or the other pulls out, then I’ll be terrible at that game!

Meanwhile, the forums are alive and kicking with once established old Orkut members, returning to the Lounge roots and involving themselves in our signature activities–reading, writing, critiquing–which is lovely, because it means the moderators can remain silent on some pieces and they’re still critiqued by other involved members which also means no piece goes unheard.

Unfortunately, we’re holding our reading in the very heart of Islamabad where I battle a vicious disagreement with pollen; so my speaking and/or reading abilities may or may not be impaired. I’ll try to do the least amount of speaking possible, with the possibility of someone reading out my pieces on my behalf becoming almost incumbent. Tragic. But as it is, we’ll see.

Sometime later this week, times, dates and venues will be sent out to the confirmed list of participants and the 29th will hopefully see us, engaged in a stimulating discussion. Looking back over our history, it really is amazing how far this once Orkut based community has come, expanding to a website, forum, e-zine and now first public reading. And as a community we’ve grown as people, maturer writers and commenced friendships outside of the community, but which have been fostered there and nowhere else; and despite all odds, “online” notwithstanding, here we are.

Still standing.

Here’s to Desi Writers Lounge!