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This article is written by a student writer from the Her Campus at Emerson chapter.

Once upon a time, I wanted to be a novelist. I wasn’t finding the stories I wanted to read and the solution was to write them myself. The craziest thing about that is after excelling in math and science in all of my schooling, I did just that and decided to go to Emerson College to study Creative Writing. Recently, I declared my concentration as fiction, which means my BFA thesis will be either a novel or a few short stories strung together. It’s everything I could have ever wanted… except in senior year, I am dabbling in film and TV. This is not what I planned, at all.

 

I was going to write novels and short stories, a blog if that did not work out, strictly fiction, after all, it was my dream, and what I studied. But, creative writing is creative writing in my mind, and I wanted to try writing a TV pilot script last year. Turns out I loved it and so did everyone else. It felt natural, not unlike writing a story, the format was just different. I went along with it. I read scripts now for a film production company in LA and tell them what works and what doesn’t. I just wrote another pilot script and am planning more.

 

And I have not stopped writing novels and short stories. It is all the same to me. It does not matter the medium that it will turn into. I could take the same story and make it into a story, a novel, poem, TV show, or film, it is the story that means something.

 

Does this mean I changed? Made a leap into the entertainment business rather than staying in a little writing/author bubble? Honestly, “no,” but “yes.” I am still a writer of stories, I am just molding them into different mediums and styles.  At the end of the day, I chase stories, I make stories, life is made of stories, some real and some fake, and it is up to me to decide how I want to tell them.

 

To a small me who wanted to be a novelist, I think that was simply because she did not know how else to tell a story. Now, I have told stories in standup comedy, stories on the street to friends, over text messages, the medium is nothing to me as long as the story is there. Here’s to a life in entertainment, novels, wherever life takes me, as long as it is creative and as long as I get to tell my story. 

Olivia Cama

Emerson '21

Olivia is a senior Creative Writing Major from New Hampshire. She loves to ice skate, write novels, and bake, as well as spend time with her elderly rabbit, who is the true star of the show.
Emerson contributor