Uma Krishnaswami, Author of Birds on the Brain, Shares Her Writing Wisdom With Open Book!

Acclaimed author Uma Krishnaswami has a great deal of experience as an author, but also as a creative writing instructor. It's a dual-role that many writers actually have throughout their career, and both skills influence the other in unique and interesting ways. 

Her latest work, Birds on the Brain (Groundwood Books), highlights Krishnaswami's talents as a writer, containing humour and pathos in equal measure. We follow young Reeni as she works on a school project about her favourite thing; birds! She is shocked to find out that no one in her city seems to be aware about the global birding event Bird Count India, even though it is about to launch a major event all over the country. Reeni enlists her uncle and friend to raise awareness about the event, and make sure the mayor (who is thwarting its prospects in the city) understands how important it is to acknowledge our feathered friends.

It's a wonderful story about a young character learning to advocate for human and non-human inhabitants in a particular community. As a special treat, we have a Teach Me to Write interview with the author today on Open Book, where she focuses on her experiences in teaching creative writing, and offers guidance and advice for emerging authors!

Open Book:

What is your approach or philosophy as a creative writing teacher?

Uma Krishnaswami: 

Note: this is a retrospective reflection. I taught creative writing for over 25 years, sixteen of them on the faculty of the MFA program in Writing for Children and Young Adults at Vermont College of Fine Arts. I’ve retired from teaching now, and I’m beginning to realize that everything I learned from my students informs my own writing.

I was always interested in helping students find and bridge the gap between what they meant to do with a story and what was on the page. That’s what I try to do for myself. In the process, sometimes the original impetus shifts as the story grows. That’s when you know you’re on your way, deep enough into the work that it carries you along.

When I taught, I’d try to stay open to possibilities in students’ drafts. I’d point out my observations on drafts and over successive revisions. This was especially wonderful when I taught the picture book intensive semester, because with a picture book you can hold the entire story in your mind, whereas sometimes with a novel it’s hard to see the forest for the trees. I wanted students to wrestle with questions, to live with ambiguity, and to get familiar with the labyrinths of their own writing.

The funny thing is that the more I went through these processes with my students, the more I came to see them at work in my own drafts and revisions. So in a very real way I think developing my own way of teaching actually gave me insights on my own work.

OB:

Do you think good writing can be taught?

UK:

I think you can teach technique. You can analyze form and genre. You can open up the experience of reading. You can teach the habits of writing. And above all you can create the conditions that allow good writing to emerge.

I’m going to answer your question with a digression. Darwin wrote about being bewildered at the sight of the eyes on a peacock’s tail. What was the earthly point of such a big, unwieldy body part with all those decorative elements? It seemed wildly, unreasonably extravagant, all fanfare and illusion. We know a lot more about the physics of a peacock’s tail now than in Darwin’s day—how microbarbs hold the “eyes” together to focus a peahen’s attention, while the surrounding feathers shimmer and shake, creating oceans of shifting color.

Like the eyes that hold together, you can teach the constants of writing—e.g., what constitutes stories, how to write scenes and follow them with sequels, how to shadow some elements and hold others close, things like that. And some writers will take that and use it to create their own dancing, living stories. But the energy and the idiosyncratic joy of story—that I think is what students have to bring to the conversation. I was always thrilled when a student would take some comment I made and then change the story in a completely different, original way from any that I could have foreseen. I continue to be delighted by seeing published versions of stories that I once saw in a workshop or while mentoring a student. That’s my reward for all those teaching years.

OB:

What is the most important advice you would offer aspiring writers?

UK:

I’d say quit aspiring and get to work. Write the things that fascinate you. Write to find out about topics that puzzle or intrigue you. Write the stories you wish you could read. Write the stories that only you can tell. Above all I’d say don’t worry about the market. It’s a fickle thing and will change when you’re not paying attention. Expect to take detours and make missteps. You have to be driven to do this work.

And read. Then read some more. Read books that are comparable to the kind of writing you want to do. Read books that are wildly different. Read books that you feel like reading and some that you find yourself resisting. Sure, find the books that make you want to read some more. But more importantly, find the books that make you want to write, that make you want to speak to them, whether that’s to amplify or argue.

OB:

What was the most important thing you've learned from a writing teacher or mentor?

UK:

To trust the story that I’m trying to tell. That sounds like “trust yourself,” but it’s more than that. It’s learning when to get out of the way, learning not to overly control the direction of a draft, learning to feel my way through revision rather than trusting to logic alone.

OB:

What are your thoughts around online writing classes? Have you had any experience teaching online?

UK:

I started teaching online. I taught some of the first online classes on writing for children. That was back in the late 1990s. I taught through writers.com, which was at the time called Writers on the Net—doesn’t that sound quaint? In some ways it felt like the perfect medium for a short, immersive experience of 4-6 weeks. We had no video calls then, no chat spaces, nothing like that. It was all by email and later via an online classroom that was basically a discussion board with threads. Then you went off and wrote and in another week, there we all were, talking to each other in messages again. You have to remember, email and bulletin boards were new and there wasn’t the exhausting volume on screens that we deal with today.

OB:

What can you tell us about your most recent book?

UK:

Every book has its own learning curve. My most recent middle grade novel is Birds on the Brain, in which my character, Reeni, is fascinated by birds. It’s a sequel to Book Uncle and Me, and the second book in what will be a trilogy. I reread Book Uncle and Me, looking for strands I could pull into the new story. I reminded myself of all the things I’ve ever told students: ease up, loosen your grip, let the character take over. Luckily for me, Reeni turned into a funny, vocal protagonist with opinions and energy. The book became a story about paying attention to the spaces in which we live, leaning into individual actions in a cause larger than yourself.

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Uma Krishnaswami was born in India and now lives in Victoria, British Columbia. Her other publications include Two at the Top, illustrated by Christopher Corr; Book Uncle and Me, illustrated by Julianna Swaney, winner of the ILA Social Justice Literature Award; and The Girl of the Wish Garden, illustrated by Nasrin Khosravi. She has been nominated twice for the prestigious Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award. Uma is faculty emerita in the Writing for Children and Young Adults program at Vermont College of Fine Arts.