300: Meet Team Awesome — A Behind-the-Scenes Look at DIY MFA

<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Hey there word nerds! </span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Welcome to the three hundredth episode of DIY MFA Radio!</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">The original plan for this episode was to unveil our first-ever DIY MFA live event—Writer Igniter LIVE—which we were planning for October. In light of current events, we’ve put the planning  for that on hold. That said, we still wanted to honor this special milestone episode by doing something a little bit different.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">To that end, I’ve gathered Team Awesome together to talk about a new approach we’ve been taking with DIY MFA. While from an outside perspective DIY MFA has been chugging away as it always has been, over the past three months the team and I have been doing a lot of internal work, getting our house in order and making key shifts to how we approach the work that we do. One of these key shifts is the concept of</span> <strong>building mental theme parks</strong><span style= "font-weight: 400;">. </span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Now, theme parks hold a special significance for me. For as long as I can remember, I have been fascinated with theme park design. Most kids go to Disney World for the rides; I was that weirdo kid begging her parents to let her take the behind-the-scenes tour of the underground tunnels. </span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">When I was twelve or so, I decided I wanted to design a ride for Epcot Center. You see, while the World Showcase features many different countries, there isn’t a single one from South America. (Sorry Mexico, but you’re not in South America). I thought it was a travesty that an entire continent would be overlooked like that, so I decided to design the Brazilian Pavilion (I mean, the marketing copy practically writes itself.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Most normal kids spend their summers traveling or going to camp. I spent my summer researching 18th century Brazilian archit