How I Became A Storyteller From A Page-Turner

 How I Became A Storyteller From A Page-Turner

Jumping through fictional worlds, becoming from a reader to a writer.

Exhibit A: A young Rifah from fifth grade lay sprawled across the bed on her stomach, eyes scanning the pink book in her hands. It was one of the cute middle-grade fiction novels her father brought home for her.

She had become a reader lately, courtesy to the copy of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone her cousin had gifted her. Rifah had gone through (read: inhaled) the Harry Potter series (her whole family was Ravenclaw. She checked.), The Chronicles of Narnia series, and then whatever she could find appropriate for her age.

But that day, as she flipped through the copy of Forever Four, a thought popped into her head:

“Why don’t I try writing stories like these, since I like them so much?”

This single thought acted as a huge turning point of my life.

Exhibit B:  

bookstagram

/ˈbʊkstæɡræm/
noun
1. a portmanteau of "book" and "Instagram," representing the booklover community on Instagram who share artistically taken book photos, review literature, and connect with readers and writers around the globe. 

"I posted my review of my recent read on my bookstagram.”

In seventh grade, when I learned about the book community ‘bookstagram’ on instagram, I knew I had to make a space for myself in this community. Thus began the journey of my book blog, which went through numerous usernames, themes and transitions and finally settled on what it’s called today: @deardiarybyrishtia.

Now, you may wonder, how did I spend my years from Exhibit A to Exhibit B? And what’s Exhibit C, my present?

I read. While I read and shared my reviews and photos on bookstagram, I wrote. A part of me felt like it had found Doraemon’s anywhere door. Being a writer opened doors to many worlds; but the catch was these worlds were created by me. Whichever genre I chose to work with, I had an array of colorful doors in front of me.

Like Doraemon’s ‘anywhere door’. I could open it and enter a world of magic and mist, a world of science fiction, a world of small towns and beaches, a world of spaceships and dreadnoughts. Being a writer meant having magical powers, in hindsight.

The Rifah from fifth grade wouldn’t have known this, but with that single ‘why don’t I’ thought, she was starting to become a writer. In the next seven years, from writing in Wattpad to Google Docs, she would become published on SHOUT (a supplement of The Daily Star), The Interlude (an online magazine), The Mason Jar Vol.2 (an anthology by Worthy Publications), and have many more work-in-progresses waiting in her drafts.

Rifah’s publications  in SHOUT, The Daily Star.

Rifah’s publications on The Interlude.

And of course the cherry on top: her self-published anthology, These Little Voices.

Rifah posing with her self-published short story collection, These Little Voices.

Now, what do stories mean to me today?

As a ‘socially awkward social butterfly’, writing has become a way to express the thoughts I found hard to share aloud. Besides jumping through fictional worlds and having fun with my characters and plots, I want to reach the readers’ hearts, have them laugh and cry with the stories I create.

I take a lot of my inspiration from the works of the writer and producer duo Lee Woo Jung and Shin Won Ho. Their works like Reply 1988 and Hospital Playlist taught me how real, mundane human lives could be shown so warmly and wholesomely even in fiction.

 

With a goal of capturing the countless emotions a single story can convey, I continue to find solace in the subtle sound of tapping on my keyboard as new worlds and characters take form in the white screen.