I started by just writing stories for my own and my friends' amusement, based on characters we liked in books and television and movies. I've always written, as far back as I can remember, so writing fanfic was basically wish-fulfilment for the characters I liked – what I'd like them to do, who I'd like them to be with, and so on. I wrote stuff based on all sorts of stuff – Robin of Sherwood was a big one, and Labyrinth. I wanted to correct things, to give them the endings I wanted – Robin #1 *shouldn't* die! Sarah *should* go off with the Goblin King! Then I discovered the Net and the X-Files at about the same time, and came across fanfic newsgroups – wow, a whole world of people out there, doing what I was doing... amazing. Now every time I pick up a new obsession, I have a look on the Net for fanfics. Generally I start writing something of my own, but it usually doesn't get posted or finished because I can't catch the right tone – can't get the characters right.
The first movie – which I didn't watch until ages after it came out, because I thought it didn't look that interesting... I fell in love instantly with the Logan and Rogue characters, and their interaction – and Rogue's green coat. Damn, I still want that coat. I thought they would be perfect for one another, wanted more, so did a search for Wolverine and Rogue, figuring someone else out there had to feel the same, and came across the WRFA. Spent days and nights reading it, got deeply immersed, got inspired, and found I loved writing the characters. I've picked up the comics, too, since then, but I don't read them religiously – they're too short, and I hate, hate, hate waiting months for the next part of the story.
I've always loved Jane Eyre. I was re-reading it at the time, and it just seemed to fit. I could see similarities between the male lead, a grumpy, irascible man, rough around the edges, with horrors in his past that come back to haunt him... And the female lead, who, despite being much younger and relatively inexperienced than him, has a strong character and wants to make her own decisions, chose her own path in life – even if it means running away from everything and everyone she knows, physically putting herself out into the world. The characters are both loners, who end up being good for one another. He's a bad-tempered git who needs someone to stand up to him – someone who isn't put off by his spiky outer shell. She blossoms when she's with him, because he can see her beauty, and pays little or no attention to the reason the rest of the world has for avoiding her. Jane is poor and plain and has few social skills and a low status as a governess, so she's not exactly an icon of femininity in her world. And Marie's a mutant, so she's an outcast too – even amongst mutants, due to her particularly dire powers.
I thought that Logan would understand Rochester's point of view at the end, when he's saying he's not much of a bargain, and that she could do much better – he can't see how he'd be anyone's idea of a happy ending. And Marie would very much understand Jane's perspective, how she's happy to be with someone like Rochester, because he treats her with respect, he is happy to argue with her and talk with her and treat her like an equal. She doesn't like being worshipped, she finds it weird, and I don't think Rogue – being the independent, kick-ass gal she is – would like that, either.
And the idea of Logan reading 'Jane Eyre' really tickled me...!
I've never really left absolutely, but for a long time I couldn't think of anything else I wanted to say about these characters. I did periodically look back at my unfinished stories – mostly just to go "Argh! I don't know what happens next!" What brought me back was a couple of W/R-related emails (in particular the email asking if I'd like to be involved in this interview!), which reminded me how much I loved writing Logan/Rogue, and how natural I found it (I was writing other fanfic at the time, and really struggling). So I had a look at some of my old stories, and could suddenly see what I should put next on that particular story.
'Prolix' was my attempt to explain why, exactly, Logan and Rogue would be good together. It always just *seemed* right to me, in the film and in the comics, but I wanted to work out why that was, exactly – I mean, obviously not everyone sees it, as otherwise there'd be a lot more Logan / Rogue moments in the second film. I was thinking of how I'd explain it to someone who didn't get it. And it's also how I'd like to see their relationship develop, if I'd had control over the movies – my most canon-based (at the time, anyhow).
Ooh. Well, I think 'Sensitive' is my favourite. Or 'Most of the Time'. Or some bits of 'Ordinary Girl'... Ack, I'm no good at playing favourites. But 'Sensitive' was the most fun to write – it just seemed to appear – I love writing Logan's internal dialogue, and it made me chuckle quietly to myself (I looked like a lunatic, no doubt) as I was writing it. And it's got angst and humour and some action, and romance – so I crammed a lot into it. 'Most of the Time' is my second favourite, because writing it felt a bit like writing poetry – it's very short and song-based, and I was trying to be a bit lyrical (and trying not to be too pretentious!). I'm pleased with 'The Ordinary Girl' just because it's so *long*. And 'Prolix' because it's kind of my manifesto on Why They're Right For Each Other.
I get my story ideas from a small boutique in Aberystwyth... I don't know, exactly, where they come from. I think they bubble under in my subconscious, when I see something... Something in my head goes 'hmmm... what if....?' Like a sort of unconscious problem-solving. And then I start to write it out, and it's like it was already there, just waiting to be written down. Well, that's generally how they start, but if they're long then there's a lot of swearing and rewriting and forcing myself to just write *some* damn thing...
One of my major sources of inspiration is music – Most Of The Time is from a Bob Dylan song, for instance. It's often not the whole song, though – usually just a turn of phrase that sets off a chain of thought. I used to read poetry (not so much anymore, I'm out of the habit), and that was really inspirational, too. I think the songs and poems that inspire me pack a lot of meaning into small phrases – so it leaves your imagination to do some work.
Uh, anyhow – I'm mostly inspired by things that aren't other stories. If anything in stories inspires me, again it's usually a particular turn of phrase, or an image that has stuck with me. I'm a big Margaret Atwood fan; she often gets me writing, because there's such a lot of vivid imagery in her writing.
I generally start writing straight off. I usually start writing by getting an idea for a conversation or something like that. It'll get stuck in my head, usually when I'm somewhere where I can't write it down, and then circles and evolves and revises itself until I get a chance to get to my computer and get it out.
I've found that, if I plan a story out, it tends never ever to get written. I've got plans for stories hanging around, but I don't think I've ever finished one of those. Once I've got the essence down, in plan form, it feels a bit dead – I can't be bothered to flesh it out. Whereas I find that, if I just start writing, I surprise myself with what happens next, and it's much more fun. It's probably bad management on my part. It's why I prefer writing short stories (everything but Ordinary Girl, which took forever), which can be written on the wave of inspiration. That's what I like about a lot of fanfic, actually – how the latest episode, or movie, or comic, or whatever, has grabbed someone – it's interesting to see what people pick up on, how their own experiences colour how they see characters and events that I might have interpreted totally differently.
~thinks back~ Crikey, I'm not sure I can remember, now, as I often don't put these things down in writing...
Okay, now I've looked back, I was intending it to mirror the story in the book 'The Ordinary Princess', by M.M. Kaye, which is basically about a princess who is very ordinary and un-princess-y. She runs away, spends a lot of time in the forest making friends with the wildlife, meets and falls in love with a nice young man, and they explore the forest together. He turns out to be the king, of course, and they get married with all due pomp and circumstance, but spend their honeymoon in a little house in the forest. Why I thought this was good Logan / Rogue material I don't remember. I think it was all the woodsy stuff, and people pretending to be more ordinary than they are. I was trying to mirror the plot, but got fed up of doing that after a while.
The second tangent I never followed was to have them run off and see the world together. I eventually decided against that – they'll do that after the story, Logan has plans, y'know, but I thought it'd be more spectacular if left to the imagination. I wasn't intending for Sabretooth and Magneto to show up at all. But I love those characters – I think it's a great pity they didn't have Sabretooth in the second film.
Lots of alcohol. Only kidding. Mostly now I let myself be blocked – if I force myself to write, I just come up with stuff that I loathe. It often helps to go absorb someone else's creative work in a different field (i.e. not writing) – like go to an art gallery, or listen to some really good music. Also, walking seems to generate creativeness in me. Getting outdoors and doing lots of walking, preferably in a wood. I like trees. Anything other than dwelling on it, basically.
I guess I prefer writing emotional plotlines rather than action plotlines – and in order for there to be a story, there has to be problems – otherwise everything's sunny and happily-ever-after, and there's not much I can write about that. If there aren't any problems, there's nothing much for the characters to do. And I'm a sadist, obviously.
Having something bad happen is often useful for whenever I want a change of pace – I did that in 'Prolix': they got to the point where they were about to go on a date for the first time, but I didn't want it to happen just then... ergo, Logan gets kidnapped and tortured for a year. More for them to deal with, more reasons for them to get close, more deserving / rewarding when they finally reach their happily-ever-after.
I think they're characters that attract a certain amount of angstiness, anyhow – what with her skin, his past, etc. And I usually make it better in the end – I find it hard to leave a story alone until I've got it to the happy ending.
'Most of the Time'. Poor Logan. And I had a lump in my throat after writing the end bit of 'Tender'. But generally writing anything, even angst, makes me happy – I'm peculiar that way. Perhaps it's cathartic... I sound mad. I'm gonna shut up now.
Logan, definitely. I think it's his non-verbalness. I'm pretty quiet myself, but I think a lot, and that's usually how I write him – the whole internal monologue thing. And I like his connection with the wilderness, and his stubborn refusal to play nice, and his sarcastic nature, and his sudden surprising insights... And all the lovely language, too – I love writing grumpy Logan. There's something very fun about writing someone so unabashedly bad-tempered. :)
Sometimes I listen to music, but usually when I'm writing I don't notice what's going on around me – music playing, television, people talking to me, the passage of time, loud explosions close to my ear... So it's pretty pointless playing anything, because I won't hear it. I listen more when I want a break from writing, want to sit back and switch off for a while.
Certain singers definitely remind me of characters. Johnny Cash makes me think of Logan, for instance. Rogue strikes me more as a Dixie Chicks or Lucinda Williams person.
I often hear a line in a song that reminds me of a character, or the feel of the song, but generally the rest of the song doesn't quite fit. 'Sunday Morning Coming Down' by Johnny Cash really reminds me a lot of Logan, but I haven't found a way to fit a story around it yet – he's not really prone to hangovers. And there's a Sarah McLachlan tune with no words, called 'Touch', that really, really makes me think of Rogue.
It often depends on what inspires me in the first place. I often start out thinking in third-person, probably because that's the norm in most books, so I'm used to the style.
I *love* writing from Logan's POV. Yes, he's really uncommunicative – but there's obviously a lot more bubbling underneath. He has moments where that shows through, in the movies and in the comics – times when he expresses himself tersely but emotionally and poetically. And I love writing first-person because of the way I can then play with the language. In Logan's case, it's the subtext that's more important – what he denies, even to himself, or doesn't say, but just implies by the way he phrases something or omits something, or breaks himself off before he says something he just won't put into words, even in his own head...
And it's like an aside to the audience – so whatever the other characters say, how they react, they're dealing with the uncommunicative Logan, and it heightens the painful difference between what he's feeling and what he's conveying to other people. So in 'Tender' they think he's okay, that he's dealing well with losing their baby – they forget, in fact, that he might have feelings on the subject at all, because Logan just doesn't show weakness if he can help it. Whereas he's actually in a lot of pain. ~sniffle~
I'd written a couple of deathfic stories already, first Logan and then Marie, and they were both pretty dark. Then I read 'As I Lay Dying', and was inspired to write a *nice* deathfic, as a way to sort of round off that as a loose trilogy. Victoria used Neil Gaiman's version of Death. And one of my favourite books of all time is Good Omens, by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett, so that made me think about Pratchett's version of Death (what is it with these guys and personifications of Death?), and how it'd be if he turned up for Logan...
I wrote the whole thing, and sent it to Victoria to ask if she minded that I'd basically stolen her idea, and she very kindly said it was okay for me to cite her story, that she liked mine, and beta'd the story for me – I was less used to writing 'American' at the time (I'm British), so she helped me with some of Logan's phrasing. I was pretty pleased with it – it's not my favourite, mainly because I'm using lots of other people's ideas, but I think it's kinda sweet, a bit poetic and a bit melancholy.
The gingko thing was inspired by the fact that we had one outside my school when I was a kid, and I remembered being told that they were the oldest trees on the planet, or something along those lines – that they lived for a very, very long time. And Logan has always had a Japanese connection, in the comics, so I thought that was some nice imagery. And it's my thing for trees cropping up again.
h, well, he's not really mine! He's Terry Pratchett's Death, borrowed. He's a character I've always loved, in Pratchett's books – the idea that he's quite workmanlike about his job, he's just there to cut the cord, and whatever happens next isn't down to him. I wanted to see if I could write him, to be honest – he's got such a distinctive style (TALKS LIKE THIS), and he's a pretty universal character – an anthropomorphic personification that fits into almost any universe – death is a constant. And I like the fact that he's, y'know, *Death*, a seven-foot skeleton with a black hooded cloak and a scythe... and yet he's kind of sweet. He's not mean or cruel, he likes cats, his horse is called Binky... So if there's any good way to die, I figure him turning up is it.
Well, they offer the pair of them the freedom to do what they want, to be whom they want and to be away from other people and the pressure of their expectations. Both characters are pretending to be something they're not, in their everyday lives, so it's a relief for them to get away from that, to know there's no one else around. Rogue uses them as a calm place to do her meditation, relaxing in the knowledge that there's no one around to touch by accident. Logan generally has a connection with the wild, in any of the stories or movies or comics. The wilderness is a dangerous, unknown place, and people in general cut through it and try to get out to the other side. Logan and Rogue come to accept it, to enjoy it, because they have a connection to it in that they both end up with feral mutations, meaning that there's a wild, animal side to them. So it represents freedom, and danger – but danger that isn't inherently evil.
Oh yes! As my brother was becoming a teacher at the time, it got me to thinking about how easy Logan seemed to have it, and how he might find it in the 'real' world. I had a look at some of the hoops that teachers have to jump through to become teachers – there's lots of rules and regulations. The education system has always been good at making things convoluted. I think that when Logan finds out how much day-to-day paperwork is involved, he'll go straight back to cage fighting. :) Can you see him writing end-of-term reports on all his students? Yeah, that'd go well... "This kid spent the whole damn term starin' out the window. If he don't pay attention next term, he's gonna get some one-on-one tutorials with me. In the Danger Room." "This kid – hell, I don't remember much about her, so she musta done okay." "I'm bored of writin' this goddamn report, so I'm just gonna say this kid did okay, too." "Gave me attitude. So I kinda like her." "Did okay, I guess." "Marie was an ideal student. She learnt lots. Taught me lots, too. A++."
Angst, definitely. Misery is a pretty easy emotion to write, I find. I love writing funny stories, but I find them bloody difficult to do well. I think writing humour is much harder, because there's the danger that it'll get too heavy, too laboured, and then it's just not funny any more, and is a chore to write (and to read). My attempts at funny stories are more often the ones that I abandon halfway through and decide never to ever look at again, because they make me feel queasy.
I wanted to kiss it all better, quite honestly. I love the characters, and I wanted them to have a happy ending. In 'Tender', they were going through a really dark time – but that didn't have to mean that their lives were going to be dark forever. Even after dealing with something that terrible, they could still, eventually, find ways to enjoy life again. I'm a compulsive happy-ender.
Er, gosh. Challenges... well, finishing stories is a big one. I'm very bad at finishing – bad, bad, bad. Putting stuff out there that I'm happy to have other people read is a challenge. I've written loads of stuff that I wouldn't want anyone ever to read – horrible, badly-written, emotionless, dusty, unfunny stuff, full of plot holes... gah.
And I'm not too good at accepting negative comments, particularly if I feel that someone's missed the point – but mostly people are very kind and supportive with their feedback. That's a big reward – feedback. Oh, how I love feedback! And I love finishing a story well – or a sentence, even – feeling like I've written something that does what I want, and that does it to the best of my ability. That's very satisfying.
One big challenge of fanfic is having an original idea. There are such a lot of writers out there, writing about the same characters, and some of them are so damn *good*... It's frustrating when you write something that you think is good, get halfway through, and then come across a story that has a similar idea, but does it so much better... But the good side of that is that it forces you into thinking, er, outside the box (horrible cliché). And also, I love reading other peoples' stories, so it's also great that these brilliant writers are out there... I'm really not complaining...
Yes – I like setting myself deliberate boundaries (like alternating POVs, for instance, so no matter how much I'm enjoying writing one character, I know that for the next section I have to switch to the other character). And I try to do things like write NiceJean when I think the story calls for it, even though I generally can't stand her (she's just so darn... *perfect!*). Sometimes setting myself a challenge means that the story never gets finished, because it feels unnatural and forced, but sometimes it means the story gets finished in record time, because it's refreshing, a change being better than a rest and all that.
I don't – well, only once: Victoria P kindly critiqued 'Gingko' before posting. And she was absolutely right, every time – she picked up all the bits that I hadn't changed because I was just being lazy, or not very thorough. I edit and edit and edit my own work – I'm nitpicky when it comes to grammar – so I don't think I need that sort of beta'ing – not on the technical side. I hope I don't, anyhow...
Sometimes I think I should get someone to pick up on when I'm being lazy, though – when I don't correct bits that are maybe a bit too vague, or that I've glossed over or haven't bothered to resolve properly – or when I'm being too wordy... or too terse... Perhaps I'll get over my shyness and ask someone, next time. If I ever finish another story.
My stamina (for want of a better word). I'd like to be able to keep going on my long stories, and not just have them lying around, unfinished. I have lots of ambitious ideas, stories I'd love to finish (there's this Pirate!Logan one that I'd just *love* to get on with – if only I could think where it's going...), but with long stories I get to the point where the inspiration has run out, and the perspiration bit kicks in. That's when I tend to stop.
I'm sure there'll be some fodder – there always is, even if (I pessimistically expect) it's only to twist and turn and load the scant words they exchange, in order to create some Logan/Rogue moments! I'm most looking forward to seeing Logan and Scott interact – as it doesn't look like there's much of Rogue (haven't seen much mention of her character). I love the way Logan and Scott sparked off each other in the previous two films, and I hope they keep that going in X3. Very fond of Scott. He's such a sweetie.
What I'd most hope to see is a good moment or two when Logan and Rogue talk, and not just about whatever action is going on. I'd like them to chat, like they did when they first met – "What kind of a name is Rogue?"... "I dunno – what kind of a name is Wolverine?"... *Loved* that. And have lots of significant eye-contact. And a hug. A big hug. Argh. I'm not going to get it, though. I'm such a pessimist.
Ack. Uh, hello ~waves~... Thank you for reading... Don't be put off by my prolixness (prolixity? wow, Word accepts that one – you learn something new every day) here – I'm much more succinct in my stories... Send me feedback anytime, even if it's a story I wrote yonks ago – it's all still appreciated...
Gah, I'm never any good at endings...