Undergraduate Students for Publishing Vice President \/\/ Abigail Lincks<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When timid film student Emily realizes she has to shoot a commercial for an abusive wilderness therapy camp, she decides that instead of turning them into the police, she will make an expos\u00e9-documentary. As she secretly interviews five teenage girls living out their nightmares, Emily begins to question what the best way is to save someone. And when it comes down to it, should you save the one or the many?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThey mistake pain for brilliance.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In this interview, McMahon speaks to us about her upcoming novella It\u2019s Not a Big Deal, exposing one of the biggest issues within the film industry today\u2014the exploitation of violence for shock value.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
How does it feel to have It\u2019s Not a Big Deal picked up for publication?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n I\u2019m definitely grateful to even have the opportunity to do this and finally have this novel out here, so #worth it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What influenced or inspired the novella?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n 1)<\/strong> The documentary, My Octopus Teacher<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I watched it for class, and everyone raved about it\u2014 \u2018It\u2019s so tender, it\u2019s so sweet.\u2019 So, I was excited to watch it. But there\u2019s this scene where the diver, who\u2019s a documentarian, is recording the octopus on the ocean floor and is recording it escaping this shark that\u2019s trying to eat it, and because he is directly above the octopus, the shark knows to get the octopus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And I was really fascinated by this idea of documentaries, and this lie that they are just documenting things when really, they are becoming part of the story themselves and sometimes causing further harm.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 2) <\/strong>The Troubled Teen Industry, specifically wilderness therapy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Wilderness therapy is this silent thing that goes on in the background of everyday life that we don\u2019t even realize is going on because these places are so secluded. These places are notoriously abusive in every way you could possibly think of, and they happen to way more people than you think. Even notable celebrities like Paris Hilton<\/a> and Danielle Bregoli<\/a> were sent to wilderness therapy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What did your writing process look like?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n I started writing this my freshman year during Christmas break. I submitted it for the Spring \u201825 semester and didn\u2019t get it. So, every year I would re-edit it and re-submit it. Until this year, I finally got in. I think that\u2019s just a big testament to writers to keep writing, keep refining, and don\u2019t let one rejection make you think, \u2018Oh, this isn\u2019t good.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n On editing:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n I\u2019ve done the old trick of writing everything that happens on sticky notes\u2014day one, day two, day three\u2014plotting it all out, going through each character, trying to define them more\u2014all within basically a week.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The novella is told from Emily\u2019s perspective, who definitely fits into the unreliable and deeply problematic narrator trope. Why did you choose to focus on her, rather than the \u201ctroubled\u201d girls themselves?<\/p>\n\n\n\n I wanted to put everyone in the shoes of Emily because I feel like she is closer to how society would view wilderness therapy\u2014someone who doesn\u2019t understand it and is more interested in it from a shock value perspective rather than helping these teenagers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What can people do to stop this practice?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n I\u2019m obviously no expert, but I think awareness is a big first step, so just knowing these places exist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Did you have a specific audience in mind while writing?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n My intended audience is honestly people who wouldn\u2019t like it because I think they\u2019re the people who need to hear it most, especially at a school like Emerson where the film students are so prevalent. Often, I see them making documentaries, short films, and writing scripts that center on and romanticize pain, and they mistake pain for brilliance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Or, they mistake pain for meaning. Not to say pain is meaningless, but they basically think pain is the heart of a story and neglect all the other things that make a story, a story. The story is human and humans don\u2019t only experience pain, and that is something I really wanted to highlight in this novella\u2014that these girls don\u2019t only experience pain, these girls aren\u2019t only mentally ill. There\u2019s a lot of tender moments between them. There\u2019s a lot of moments of resilience. And those moments are there for us as a reader, but they\u2019re not there for Emily.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What scenes stood out to you while writing?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n The most difficult scene to write was any scene where the girls were going through any abuse because I made a rule for myself that I wouldn\u2019t include anything in the book that didn\u2019t happen in real life. Like the girls not getting their periods or made to work for their food.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It’s Not a Big Deal<\/em> will be officially released at Pub Club’s launch party December 13th from 2 PM-4 PM in the Lion’s Den! Make sure to grab yourself a copy and listen to Madison McMahon read an excerpt from the story!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Undergraduate Students for Publishing Vice President \/\/ Abigail Lincks When timid film student Emily realizes she has to shoot a commercial for an abusive wilderness therapy camp, she decides that…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2961,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2,3,4,16,17,29,9,12],"tags":[49,56,26,38,41],"class_list":["post-2960","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-about-publishing","category-about-reading","category-about-writing","category-author-bios","category-usp-authors","category-current-events","category-pub-news","category-wilde-press","tag-books","tag-emerson","tag-publishing","tag-reading","tag-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/orgs.emerson.edu\/undergraduate-students-publishing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2960","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/orgs.emerson.edu\/undergraduate-students-publishing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/orgs.emerson.edu\/undergraduate-students-publishing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orgs.emerson.edu\/undergraduate-students-publishing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orgs.emerson.edu\/undergraduate-students-publishing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2960"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/orgs.emerson.edu\/undergraduate-students-publishing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2960\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2987,"href":"https:\/\/orgs.emerson.edu\/undergraduate-students-publishing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2960\/revisions\/2987"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orgs.emerson.edu\/undergraduate-students-publishing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2961"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/orgs.emerson.edu\/undergraduate-students-publishing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2960"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orgs.emerson.edu\/undergraduate-students-publishing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2960"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orgs.emerson.edu\/undergraduate-students-publishing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2960"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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