FAM #07

[aadler]

The Fanfiction Ask Meme (from cornerofmadness through trobadora through naye through something from Tumblr).

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What made you start writing fanfic?
Which of your own fanfics have you re-read the most?
Describe the differences between your first fanfic and your most recent fanfic.
Do you think your style has changed over time? How so?
You’ve posted a fic anonymously. How would someone be able to guess that you’d written it?
Name three stories you found easy to write.

Name three stories you found difficult to write.

This one I can also answer fairly quickly, with an advance caveat that I count only the stories I actually have written.

1. I started “the Still, Small Voice” after returning from my first deployment to Iraq, but it resisted me for a long, long, long time. The original inspiration had been some kind of answer to the vilification that Quentin Travers, and Tara’s father, had been subjected to in fanfiction (and to a certain extent, in canon as well). The elder Maclay was a particular sore point; as a de facto member of the patriarchy, I resented the presentation of what so clearly seemed to be a straw man who existed for the sole purpose of being knocked over by our more tolerant, more enlightened, more woke heroes. (The terminology didn’t exist then, but I don’t think it’s inapt for this instance.)

I never could get more than a page or two into it, and I couldn’t figure out why. Strictly to round things out, I had included a third member of the party, an OFC of my own (I might have made Hank Summers the third person if I hadn’t already given him his own presentation in “Tip of My Tongue”). And I had a fair idea of the new guy’s personality and that of the two other men, it was just a matter of using their interaction to explore the issues I wanted to. It didn’t work. It didn’t go anywhere. Something was missing.

I’d had something similar happen to me with “… Than Meets the Eye”. The basic framework for that story had been in place for years, and I’d even made a start or two at it, but it had no legs. Then — I don’t remember from where — the thought came to me, Sheila should be part of this. Just like that, my problems were solved, and TME was written in something like a week (longhand, on a hilltop in Kurdistan). This time, lying in a B-hut in Afghanistan while I tried to get to sleep, turning my writing woes over in my head and trying to figure out where the problem was, I was struck just as directly: the priest is telepathic. That single additional element gave me everything I had felt as a lack, and the story proceeded easily enough from there.

How long did it take me to write? Something near a year and a half, total time, but ninety-five per cent was done in the month after I got my inspiration.

2. As people who know me know already, sroni is my daughter. I not only raised her to be a writer (with her avid cooperation), I basically raised her on Buffyfic. I’m the single most influential person in her overall writing development, so a collaboration should have been no problem, right?

Sorry. We have many things in common, but we’re still different people with different perspectives and different writing preferences and strengths. She’d already done “God Save the Queen”, with me working out plot details with her before she wrote it, and then me going in to do cleaning and proofreading and suggestions for polish. We’d agreed to do the sequel together, but when she finally turned out her proof of “Queen’s Gambit” and it was given to me for rewrite … This story didn’t flow from me, I’d worked it out with someone else and she’d written it, and now I had to work with something that wasn’t bad but wasn’t mine. I had to adapt, adjust, think my way into ways of approach and application that weren’t natural to me. The end result was the longest fanfic I’ve ever done (short-novel length), and satisfying in a number of ways, but boy was it work!

How long on that? Not even sure. I suspect something in the general neighborhood of five years, though much of that was taken up with sroni getting out her first draft.

3. The final story was also a collaboration with sroni. “Reversible Error” was my idea, ‘Twelve Slayer Awakenings That Did or Didn’t Happen’ (the subtitle), and my plan was that I would write six, sroni would write six, and I would do the framing narrative that would tie it all together. I got my parts done expeditiously enough, and enjoyed them; my daughter, on the other hand …

Okay, there were other things going on in her life. For at least some of that time, she was living in Ireland, working things out with the man she would eventually marry. Come on, though, what kind of writer lets a little thing like marriage get in the way of fanfic? Seriously, some people.

That one? Maybe three years. Just guessing, but I’d say somewhere in that neighborhood.

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My single hardest fic, now, is one I haven’t written or even started yet. I’ve been hoping to do it ‘next year’ since 2006, though. A runner-up is one that I’ve started twice, with two different sets of characters, and if I ever go back to finish it I’ll be using a third set instead. But, as I said, currently I only count stories I’ve done.

And there you are.

Still to come:

What’s your ratio of hits to kudos?
What do your fic bookmarks say about you?
What’s a theme that keeps coming up in your writing?
What kind of relationships are you most interested in writing?
For E-rated fic, what are some things your characters keep doing?
Name three favorite characters to write.
You’re applying for the fanfic writer of the year award. What five fanfics do you put in your portfolio?