When did you start writing XF fanfic? How did you start?

It was after the movie, I know that much. I hadn't been really watching the show; one weekend when I was left to my own devices I happened to rent the tapes they had at Blockbuster (a friend at the university where I taught then swore I'd love the show, but I've never been really one for television, so...). I saw "Unruhe" and I was instantly hooked.

By the time the movie came out I was really into it, and the day the movie came out I got tangled up on an AOL message board about the show and was introduced to the fic community from there by one of the Primal Screamers. I read a few things and then saw "Emily" and got the idea for "Goshen."

I'd studied fiction to be able to teach it, but I'd never written a complete story before, so it was a challenge that I really enjoyed since it was outside my usual fields of writing and was something that didn't have to go through the workshop experience I'd had in graduate school. So I wrote it, a friend helped me post it. From there I came into contact with the fic community, which actually had to seek me out considering I was a newbie writer AND I'd forgotten to put my email address on the story when I posted it! (I didn't know what feedback was...). My Primal Screamer friend invited me to Scullyfic and so my XF fic stint began!

What else do you write?

I write almost all the time, quite literally. I'm a teacher in an English and Literary Arts program at a school for gifted kids in the Performing Arts, so I write a lot of lectures and reviews of things to keep them interested and working. I did an MFA in poetry and creative nonfiction, and I've published a book of poetry and some essays, the latter of which I'm working on compiling now into a collection. My second book of poetry is out being looked at as we speak, which is what I've been doing for the past year. I'm also working on an original novel off and on which I've got some interest in, but to be honest, poetry is really where my heart is, poetry and nonfiction, so I tend to concentrate my energy on those. I've never been much into the money trip about writing, and though poetry will never make me much of a penny, it's what I do and who I am and I try to keep to that.

I do a lot of editing for professional writers (two novelists right now), which seems to lodge in the same place in my head as writing. So I keep pretty busy with the whole thing.

What kind of process do you undertake when you write?

It's pretty much the same for all the writing that I do -- I tend to write in one long stint once I actually sit down to write, though I've usually spent a least a day (or more) thinking my way through whatever I'm writing before I actually sit down to do it. That way, once I do get the time to sit down, I have the thing mostly done in my head and I just write it down. For longer pieces, like some of my XF novels, I'll start planning a chapter one day, start outlining the next, and then I'll write the whole chapter in one or two days. I tend to work that way with novels because I have to be so careful about my time. Teaching is such a time-sucker. I reckon everybody's jobs are. But teaching, honestly, seems to never end, so I've had to learn to squeeze where I can.


Has the series ending affected the way or what you write?

I'm pretty active in one writing community, which is Emuse (formerly known as Scullyfic). I maintain my enthusiasm because THEY maintain their enthusiasm, basically. I don't really watch the show anymore, not even the DVDs, but then I was rarely a "repeat viewer," so that's not that much of a hinderance to me. I've been writing a series of AU novels for so long that I really feel like I've got my own area of story to run around in, so I tend to stay in it. I've done a few vignettes lately, some post-eps, which is strange for me, and usually grow out of someone saying something about an episode that sparks something. I tend to get excited about the act of writing more than I do about the show, and I don't think that will ever go away.


How has teaching writing influenced your own writing?

They're really hard to pull apart at this point. I've been teaching writing for almost as long as I've been formally studying it and doing it (I started teaching college at 22 or 23 and that's also when I had my first really rigorous training with writing), so they've always been sort of the same process to me. I learn about my writing by teaching other people to understand their writing. I've learned to control my process by teaching other people to be aware of theirs. It's been both a blessing and a curse in a lot of ways because sometimes the teaching can be difficult and extraordinarily time consuming and emotionally taxing, and that does take away from the energy I have for my own work. I know a lot of people who teach writing who have had to stop writing, or found themselves stopping writing, because their brain is so much into solving the problems in their STUDENTS' work and they don't have any space left to figure out their own. I've tried very hard to stay away from that trap. One thing that's helped is that I almost always have a project that I am writing with my students, and I share it with them as I do it so they can see my mistakes and my successes with it and they can watch my process. Sometimes I embarrass myself, but I always admit my mistakes (a bad chapter or poem is called a "Black Armband Day") and keep working and they learn something and so do I. I still think, after all this time, that I have the best job in the world.


You've had a number of WIPs. What is their appeal for you? Any upcoming stories or projects to look out for?

Yes, I've done a number of WIPs, for sure! I think I wrote a chapter (or sometimes more) a week for something like...16 months? Then did one a bit slower for about five more months. Then I immediately tried to do a chapter a week again and burned myself out. I didn't get into WIPs for the attention they'd receive, though eventually other people being engaged in the stories did keep me going on them and I appreciated getting to know so many great people through writing them. I'm still working on a WIP, which I'm posting in a small email list because frankly I got burned out on being so public. I'm a really private person and I started to feel strangely exposed and pressured, and I started taking it all too seriously in some ways. Someone would write me an email and tell me they were disappointed in me for not posting one week and I would be bummed out about it for days. So now I just post to people who are willing to wait and let me work, and my profile is a lot lower and I'm happy about that. I have a tight-knit community of people around me who support me in what I do (in both fic and non-fic ventures), and I have some really great people who read my pieces and who are supportive of what I'm doing. That's all I need these days. No threads here or there, no announcements about chapters being up anywhere, no awards. One of my teachers used to tell me all the time: "One word, Bone: simplicity." And that's what I've tried to get back into doing.

That said, "The Lost Land," the last of the Goshen Universe stories, will be finished as soon as I can. Once it's done, I'll put the whole thing up and people can do with it what they will. I'm enjoying writing it again, though the story itself is extremely complex for me to keep up with and I'm having to catch myself up on my own work. That's always funny to me, when I read a bit and don't remember that something happened the way it did! But it's all coming back to me now. ;o)
 

Is there's anything else you'd like to tell readers out there?

I know it sounds trite, but I'd really like to thank everyone for reading the stories and for their support over the years. This community has given me so much in so many ways, and I've had a surprisingly smooth trip through the fandom, for which I'm grateful. Fanfiction has given me a new community, renewed discipline and a renewed love for telling a story for the sake of a story, and that is a great gift.

I'd also encourage people to either start or keep writing if they can find the time to do it, but to remember that with any public presentation of your work with people doing the same thing you are you've got two choices when you start: The Two C's, we used to call it in school. You can either choose Competition or you can choose Community. A lot of people choose competition and it ends up just making them miserable and angry and defeated in the end, since there will always be someone who gets more attention, who writes better, or who comes up with the right idea at the right time. Community is where you put yourself in a position to be an apprentice, where you can make connections with people who are doing the same thing you're doing, and where you can build something that lasts beyond this show and its fandom. I've always heard that with poetry 90% of your pay is in people, and I think that holds for fanfiction, as well. So my advice is not to cheat yourself out of your pay.

Thanks for having me. I appreciate you all letting me talk and listening to me very much.