We all are story tellers, aren’t we? What else would you call the way we cook up stories when we want to lie, when we manage to create imaginary characters just to please our children, when we write essays and autobiographies in schools or better still manage to grab the attention at get-togethers as we go about narrating simple day-to-day incidents with a panache that has everybody hooked!
How travel helps storytelling
I have always believed each one of us has a story to say, provided there is a listener. Due to my work profile I travel a lot and I get most of my stories from the different people I meet on such journeys; not necessarily in person, but in some way their stories speak to me. Relationships, love, emotions, family, friends, break ups and many other such facets of life are captured in those deep dark eyes. Something in them begins to narrate their stories.
Every time I saw a person, I observed much more than what was visible to a naked eye. I never noticed it till the time a friend pointed it out to me when I guessed his dilemma just be observing his behavior. And that is when I realized the art of reading people. I wouldn’t say I have mastered it completely for I am still learning it every day through each and every person I meet. Like that old couple I met in a restaurant who redefined love, or that newspaper clipping about a real life incident which triggered me to write about what would have been their thoughts in real life. For me Metro Diaries is about anything that happens around us.
Starting a blog
I began capturing those stories on my blog (Memoirs of Me – www.privytrifles.in) under the title Metro Diaries. I am a diehard romantic, hopelessly in love with life – that’s what I call myself. I keep falling in love daily. Sometimes it is with an idea, a song, a book, a movie, a dream, a dress or maybe a story. But I never realized when this love started spilling its infectious magic in my writing. I began writing love stories as I simply loved them having grown up to believe in happily-ever-afters.
People around me inspired me day in and out for I saw love in everything and it was soon that I was tagged as the Yash Chopra of the Blogosphere and began receiving comments like “No one writes love the way you do!” Perhaps I didn’t realize it till one day I won a random online contest where they wanted to publish an ebook written by me. Till then a book was something I never thought of, but this victory gave birth to that idea. I was asked what I would like to write about and needless to say my answer was Metro Diaries with only love stories. Though the series on my blog is a mixture of love and drama I wanted this one to be special. And that is how Metro Diaries – the book was born.
Image credit: Magenta Rose on flickr and reproduced under Creative Commons 2.0[author] [author_image timthumb=’on’]https://writingtipsoasis.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/Namrata.png[/author_image] [author_info]Namrata is the author of Metro Diaries and a contributing author to various anthologies. She is the editor for Writer’s Ezine, a columnist at Estrade and a reviewer for various publishing houses. You can reach her through Facebook: (www.facebook.com/wingstomywords)
Twitter: (@privytrifles) and her Website: www.privytrifles.com.
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