Just One Thing with Selen Ozturk

Selen Ozturk’s flash “Cancer” looks pain dead in the face, refuses to blink. Here she shares just one thing about the piece:

“Why is it always the dumbest ideas that turn beautiful. Here’s how I made this story: I was close friends with someone who had testicular cancer as a kid resulting in the loss of one (1) ball. He got me into Mystery Science Theater 3000. We fell out of touch, then he moved away and I never called him. Months later I still felt really bad about it but I was also hungry so instead of calling him I cooked myself a steak and had wine and put on an MST3K episode in which a scientist keeps his fiancée’s severed head alive after a car accident while looking for a new body for her. There were a lot of YouTube ads so I turned it off after ten minutes and remembered I hadn’t written anything good in a while. I tried writing a story about a cancer patient who gets the wrong ball amputated but realized it would take a female Tolstoy to fully convey the pathos of that so I pivoted to wrong boob. For research I spent four hours reading Reddit threads from women who had undergone mastectomies and double mastectomies, then half an hour reading Reddit threads from surgeons who performed them. Then I thought I should make this story more interesting to the reader, so I made a robber come to her workplace and shoot her, and also gave her an Ativan dependency and emotional problems. I haven’t experienced any of these events personally, though I'm friends with two oncologists. I’m very proud of this story. I should call my friend.”