Becoming a civil servant does not extinguish Cahyaningtyas Kushardina’s, also known as Dina, writing passion. Dina, an alumna of the 2013 cohort in the Department of Informatics at Universitas Dian Nuswantoro (Udinus), writes to convey her feelings and hobbies. To her, writing is relaxing.

According to Dina, writing served as a medium to harmonize her thoughts in order to be more focused. Additionally, she also claimed that written media could improve her insight in choosing the correct words and meanings. “Writing is like an oasis, when you run out of ideas, you can make your mind to be more focused by writing. It feels like drinking water to cast your thirst away,” Dina said.

Dina said that in order to become a writer, one needed to read literature about writing. Every small thing in our daily lives could be essentially a story if the word placement is correct, she added that a story would turn realistic if it was presented with backgrounds related to the readers’ situation.

Routine activities could be made into interesting stories as they are relatable to the readers, which makes them interesting,”

To this day, Dina has published two books namely ‘Pengendali Naga,’ which was independently published, and ‘Serapucit (Serapium Punya Cerita)’, a collection of short stories and kaskusers. In addition to writing in a book form, Dina also presents her stories on the internet using her pen name. According to her, having her story read by someone was such a satisfactory experience.

Dina, currently working as a secretary staff of Magetan Regency, claimed that she often encountered writer’s block, a situation where a writer run out of ideas. However, Dina regularly turns this situation into a form of challenge to develop her ideas and writings. Furthermore, she has her own way of overcoming those obstacles namely, by reading and conducting light activities by choosing the story outline.

She quoted that being a writer did not require forced ideas to be developed. Then, she also added that sparing time to write and adding story ideas was also a necessity. “There is no clear deadline in writing. If an idea pops out of your mind, you might as well write the idea; however, if you are stuck out of ideas, doing various activities may guide you to some ideas. Most importantly, do not ever forget the goals and the narrative direction,” Dina concluded. (Humas Udinus/Nuvia. Foto: Dok. Pribadi)

Name :

Cahyaningtyas Kushardina – Alumni Prodi S1 Teknik Informatika Udinus