From a TCLA member’s perspective – Written by Kavindu Athukorala
“Write Up!” was the Trinity College Literary Association’s (TCLA) latest project: a series of 3 online workshops, on the subject of professional writing, for the students of the Middle and Upper School.
The main objectives of this series of workshops were to first and foremost find the students who are interested in writing as a career and assist them in improving their skills, and to show more students the uses and the extent to this career will help you.
Even students who weren’t interested in pursuing a career centered on writing would have found these workshops invaluable.
In addition to these primary objectives, the series had a secondary objective and that was to find writing talent capable of writing for the school website.
This started as just a vague idea of a project and finally turned out to be a successful endeavor that I wasn’t certain we could’ve pulled off, amidst many hardships and setbacks. A project of this caliber, which would require a considerable amount of logistical support, was managed just by a team of seven members, and the immense support from the Web Content Team and the College IT Department.
Journalism 101
The first session was about the basics of Journalism, or “Journalism 101” (6.00 p.m. on Saturday, 17th of July) with Mr. Malinda Senevirathne, a veteran journalist and a freelance writer.
Mr. Senevirathne gave a very illuminating and fact-filled session on the basics of journalism, which included a very underappreciated aspect of writing: keeping articles short and simple, while doing your best to give the essential details and dropping out unnecessary ones. This helps a writer immensely, especially when you have to relay important information very quickly.
Digital Journalism
The second session was about Digital Journalism with Ms. Tharindi Thalahity, the current Deputy Editor at Pulse, Sri Lanka (6.00 p.m. on Saturday, 31st of July).
She gave an interactive and very informative, as well as intuitive, session about digital journalism, covering the key elements we should take into consideration when writing a digital article: a short and sweet article, and a flashy eye-grabbing topic. This session, while abiding on the groundwork laid down by Mr. Senevirathne, built up around the vast area of the digital world and a tiny bit of basic psychology.
Creative writing
The third and final session of the “Write Up!” series was quite a memorable one on Creative writing with Mr. Vihanga Perera (Sunday, 8th of August.)
He made our final session fun and interactive, bringing up his personal history with Trinity College as a Kingswoodian, and the deep-rooted history of both Colleges, as well as the lesser looked at but amazing and interesting aspects of Sri Lankan literature.
He talked about poets and songwriters like Richard De Soysa, Louis Edmund Blaze (pronounced Blah-zae) who was a past master at Trinity and the founder of Kingswood College, and Joan Ramsbottom.
Using references from poems, maps, and very unexpected sources he guided the students towards an understanding of creativity and how we can go about harnessing it, while conducting his session from Canberra, Australia!
