Creativity in abundance!
By Ros Haden
For the past two years one of the highlights for me has been our “Mentoring Young Writers” project. This pairs emerging ‘mentee’ writers with established ‘mentor’ writers to produce two short stories linked in interesting ways.
This year writers were based in Gauteng. The project started with a bang with a workshop in Johburg but then threatened to fizzle out completely due to funding issues. Just in time the National Arts Council funding came through and we got all the writers together again to get things back on track, and to enjoy a day of writing, socialising and eating!
Finally, after much editing, two of the writers relocating, and a couple of mentor changes all the short stories are complete and have been published on FunDza’s mobi site to our writers’ and readers’ delight. Certain themes were more popular than others and we had a flurry of stories with love in the title: Hungry for Love, The Lottery of Love, Love never Fades, Distracted Love with lots of star-crossed, confused and desperate lovers! But it wasn’t all romance, there were also some darker stories like Vampire Weekend and The Price is Right for Revenge!
It is very difficult for young writers, in fact for any writer, to get one-on-one help at honing their craft and to get published. The mentees got invaluable help from their mentors and mentors kept their stories fresh and relevant with the help of the mentees.
For any young writer there is a special thrill about seeing your first story in print! We can’t wait for the launch of the print anthology of these stories in the second edition of the anthology ‘It Takes Two’ in Jozi early next year. If you are in Gauteng look out for an invitation to this occasion.
Next year we hope to take this project to KZN and discover yet more writing talent.
Here’s what some FunDza Fanz wrote about the paired stories:
“Mmm a touching, inspiring, motivating and courageous story, wow, impressed.” – Selu
“Love this story wish there were more like this” – Lutendo
This was such a cool read … the message at the end was awesome. – Mercy
“We want more. We want more. We want more.” – Teekay
“10/10 or should I rate story with 5 stars” – Faku’kezi
“Wow, interesting story, real situations affecting our lives.” – Huyanda