Brightminded
AN INTERVIEW WITH emma brightman
Emma Brightman can always be found at the heart of every story she writes, a place where logic and daydreaming join forces to create something incredible. As the editor-in-chief of the centennial edition of the Ivy Leaves Journal, Emma’s aptitude for the written word and eye for strong literature come together to curate an enticing collection of unique pieces written by the student body. Through the guidance of beloved professors, and having several written works of her own accepted into the journal during her time at Anderson, Emma has grown into the remarkable writer she is today.
Writing is something that Emma has always done. As an inquisitive child, there was nothing she loved more than to create her own adventures in her mind before she went to bed. In this setting, she was able to put herself into the shoes of the characters she imagined and interact with each of them in a way she had never done before. As Emma got older, she continued to use this brainstorming tactic to imagine how a story might play out. However, as life handed her the various questions and trials of her teenage years and early adulthood, she began looking at the stories through a different perspective. Emma shares, “I enjoy fiction, but I like blending my own life with it. I would take events that were happening in my own life or things in the future that I was afraid of and walk through them with my characters; so it was a way to process things.”
When asked what she deems a good writer, Emma answers, “Writing feels very subjective. Why is this actually good? Is it because it's good or because everyone says it's good?” A good writer, to Emma, is someone who can craft a story well and who can smoothly blend technicality with artistry. She shares an insight given to her by a professor at Anderson, Dr. Derek Updegraff, who said, “If you’re not noticing the gears in the story, that means it’s going right.” Being good at your craft means being able to hide the things that pull a reader out of your story. Having worked with kids for the past four summers at a creative writing camp, the main thing that Emma likes to stress to her students is “don’t try too hard.” To be a persuasive author is to hone in on the ability to enter the headspace of the characters you are creating and write convincingly from that perspective. Throughout this camp, students focus on a different aspect of writing each day of the week, one of those aspects being describing emotions. Emma explains that “you as an author have so much power in the similes you choose ... so every time you want to use a cheap simile you need to ask yourself, ‘what else can I come up with?’” Emma believes that digging for a strong simile is part of what can lead to creating your own voice as an author.
Finding a unique voice as an author in a world where every voice is fighting to be heard is far from easy. Emma shares that a part of her feels like she hasn’t found that voice yet. “The writing that I do just for me makes me happy and hopeful. It creates a world that I would want to live in and a future that I’d want to see for myself,” Emma adds. She once read the idea that every story has already been told, which feels like a huge obstacle to creating a work that will stand out. It can be daunting in the college environment to find your voice as a writer and not compare yourself to the classmates around you. It’s important to remember the beauty there is in originality. “I have a passion for things that someone else doesn’t and a way of saying things that they don’t. So even if they are farther along than me or can write better poetry than me, I still have a different way of saying things that will touch people differently and different passions I would lean towards that maybe they wouldn’t... each writer's own unique voice comes from their background, the words that they know, their own developed style, the authors they draw from, but also their own unique passions that they decide to lean into and just their own voice that no one else has in a way that sets you apart.”
As Emma prepares to walk the stage this May and collect her diploma, she is looking ahead to what the future has in store for her. Graduating as a double major in Creative Writing and Writing & Digital Studies, there’s a wide road before her. With hopes to either attend graduate school in the fall or even pursue a career abroad, Emma Brightman will undoubtedly go far.
“When I think of myself, I think of someone who daydreams a lot, but I also think of someone who is very logical and how those things fit together.”
