Ask the Author: astolat
| Interviews by Fans | |
|---|---|
| Title: | Ask the Author: astolat |
| Interviewer: | |
| Interviewee: | astolat |
| Date(s): | February 22, 2008 |
| Medium: | online |
| Fandom(s): | Supernatural |
| External Links: | interview is here, Archived version |
| Click here for related articles on Fanlore. | |
astolat was interviewed in 2008 for Supernatural Roundtable.
Some Excerpts
I'm astolat here on LJ, having grudgingly accepted the name because my longtime pseud "shalott" was taken, except over time I've fallen in love with the name and now it's what I'm using almost exclusively. I've also gone by shalott and (a while ago!) the lady of shalott. I got hooked on SPN last year in Season 2 after finally caving in and watching Playthings (I am a horror wimp who has to fast-forward or mute nearly all the scary scenes, which is why I resisted for so long). I then immediately freaked myself out marathoning the whole rest of the show, and it's been pretty much nonstop Sam/Dean for me since then.
My website also has all the other fanfic I've written over the last mumblemumble years. I've been puttering around online fandom since 1994, when I joined STREK-L on a crappy old VAX/VMS mainframe system, although I really got into writing fanfic hardcore around 1996 when I stumbled into Sentinel fandom, and my fate was sealed. I tend to be a fannish butterfly by inclination, although lately I have been less migratory because I actively avoid watching any new shows I think will lure me in, because I don't have time. Apart from writing, I'm also a vidder and a coder, and I tend to do crazy things like start conventions and pan-fandom challenges and nonprofits. (This is probably why I end up without enough time.) I am at the FIAWOL end of the spectrum and love the community and people I meet here heaps and heaps. ♥ In fanfic, for writing I tend to have an OTP in any fandom, and love doing first-times more than anything else, although I happily read pretty much anything that is recced to me as time allows. I like to play with character interpretation and different styles and POVs.
I seriously have no idea where my ideas come from! They sort of just pop into my head without warning, or at least the kernel of them does; then the details come the more I poke at them. I do find that the more ideas I come up with and use, the more of them come to me, to the point that I don't have anywhere near enough time to write all of them.Actually this is one thing I love about participating in a flashfic comm like spnflashfic (cough cough, stealth pimping), not just people giving you a random prompt every so often but seeing how other people interpret it, and it's a terrific mental exercise.
My editing process -- I share chunks with betas as I go and often re-read my own stuff; I frequently rip out and rewrite large chunks if I'm not happy enough with them. I never post something I'm not happy with, but I often stuff things aside and write something else, and then go back and poke at the unfinished ones later on to see if they unlock; if they don't I keep on at something else, and once in a while I will get determined to finish something and just beat away at it until it surrenders. But when I *am* happy with something, then I am SO DONE and all I want is to post it and get it out there and never touch it again. *g*
And haha, yay. I love writing sex! yay sex! \o/ Generally the key IMO to great sex is sex that tells us something about the characters while they're having it, and plays a role in the plot (which can be all about sex). Also I totally love and worship resonant8's essay on how to write sex scenes which articulates lots of my own thinking about erotic writing.
One of the things I love in fanfic is that you can play with the characters and write them different ways, and people get that. That is, you can write a dominant-Sam story one week and a toppy-Dean story the next and it is all good, as long as you are telling the reader something interesting and fun about them while you do it, and it doesn't so much matter (to me, anyway) if it meshes with what I "really" think they are like (which again for me changes almost week to week *g*).
Sex scenes can be difficult mostly when I find that I want the same sex scene (or at least, the same in a lot of essentials) in two different stories. Then I get bored. But generally, because I'm following the rule above (that the sex scene has to mean something in the story), it's not really any harder than writing anything else. Which is often hard! But still ridiculously fun at the same time. :D
(Actually, the thing I generally find hardest to write is dialogue scenes where I am trying to make some kind of character shift or plot thing happen -- making that work in a conversation while keeping the characters in-character and sounding like themselves is painfully hard!)