Damyanti Writes – Simon's still stanza

Welcome to the #WATWB We Are The World Blogfest for August 2019.

Please visit our valiant co-hosts as well.

Susan Scott, Peter Nena, Shilpa Garg, Mary J. Giese and Damyanti Biswas.

This month I’ve gone a bit off the grid. Neither of these two stories about writers have been generated by news media sources. But they are still good news. Given all readers of this blogfest are ‘reader-types’ and many of you are also writers, I think they are good news stories of interest.

Josephine Moon.png Josephine Moon. Picture from Better Reading Podcast, accessed 27 August 2019.

#1. Josephine Moon. You can read about her here and listen to her on the Better Reading Podcast here. Josephine became a novelist and tells us that she kept a spreadsheet of her attempted manuscripts. After 100 rejections she finally deleted the spreadsheet. But, wait for it. She persevered with her writing and has been published numerous times. One of the aspects of writing she favours is “uplit”. Uplit is writing that encourages hope. Sounds like a WATWB theme to me. Then there is this:

In 2018, Josephine organised the ‘Authors for Farmers’ appeal, raising money to assist drought-affected farming communities. She is passionate about literacy, and is a proud sponsor of Story Dogs and The Smith Family.

As Australia is still in drought, that has a ring of good news.

Damyanti’s soon to be published novel. Image from her website, accessed 27 August 2019.

#2. Damyanti Biswas. Oh, yes. You’ve come across her before. In fact, she and Belinda McGrath Witzenhausen are the people who got us into this blogfest. What is also fabulous about this forthcoming novel, #YouBeneathYourSkin, is that some of the proceeds will go to support a great initiative for children called Project Why and to help those afflicted by abominable acid attacks in India.

You can find other posts at #WATWB

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It is frequently a pleasure to read some regular wordpress bloggers. One I often look forward to is Damyanti Writes. This was especially so when I read her What do you plan to do this New Year? For starters, it offers a very practical New Year resolution. It will not be popular with those who use social media as a means of attacking people and ideas. But another reason it warrants a mention on Simon’s Still Stanza is that it includes a very good poet – Mary Oliver.

A New Year might be an opportunity to not only make fresh resolutions, but to read a different author, or to revisit one who has enriched us before.