Ask the Author: drvsilla
| Interviews by Fans | |
|---|---|
| Title: | Ask the Author: drvsilla |
| Interviewer: | |
| Interviewee: | drvsilla |
| Date(s): | August 6, 2010 |
| Medium: | online |
| Fandom(s): | Supernatural |
| External Links: | interview and comments are here, Archived version |
| Click here for related articles on Fanlore. | |
drvsilla was interviewed for Supernatural Roundtable.
Some Excerpts
Three things. To begin:
- SPN is my first active fandom, but I've always been fannishly inclined. I grew up on scifi/fantasy novels, ST:TNG, PBS [no really, this fits], and Podkayne of Mars or the LotR trilogy as bedtime stories. I progressed to comics, action-adventure and kung-fu movies; my favorite comic-inspired media is Batman: The Animated Series.
- Writing hard-followed my fannish and genre inclinations. I wiled many hours with my Pop in his tiny office at home or his equally tiny office at the university, writing while he wrote, him on his Apple:2E, and I with dinosaur paper and dinosaur pen [literally & figuratively]. At one point in my undergrad career I had a prof ask me to please write less in my "response journal" [mandatory exercise for all classes at my college]. I'm usually the rare bird in different art programs and exhibitions whose artist statement is, more or less, a one-page story. Sometimes I look back on past works and cringe--lol, is that a 'short man with a certain color of eyes' I see before me?--but you gotta start somewhere. I've always loved words and have been enchanted by what they can do when put together [sometimes, I too read the dictionary].
- I wrote my first fic for SPN about two hours after the pilot aired; SPN is the reason I created my LJ account. I primarily write S/D. Probably ironic, as what might arguably be my most recognizably known story is the J2 PBR AU.
Three things : I take very seriously when writing:
- Titles. [I see many complaints about titling; I never relate, because I love titling stories & consider them very important.]
- Structure. [Sometimes to the point of obsession; I'd worry, but if I stopped obsessing I'd probably stop writing.]
- Process. [This includes edit-edit-editing, and not taking it all too seriously.]
I'm generally inspired by what the show doesn't give us, which I suspect is obvious and would say is what gravitates the majority to fandom and fic. I'm not much on codas or missing scenes, but I love writing about all the lost time that has gone unexplored or unexplained in canon, from the tangible [preseries, Stanford years, just how did they get from state to state in the first two seasons, dailyness] to the abstract [motivations, anything character internal, the S/Dness of it all].Sometimes I am directly inspired by an episode, like wanting to write about Sam learning that the mean voicemail wasn't from Dean, but the majority of my inspiration is broader, stuff I get to ruminating on in my own headspace that I then want to explore via the characters.
Lack of inspiration only happens with "obligation" fics, and I think this probably isn't unique or surprising. If you're inspired, yay away you go and you write until it's done. But signing up for a challenge or an exchange, you're inspired in that moment, a lot because of the excitement of signing up. Maybe you start to write, but then you have that seemingly faraway due date and it's easy to let the process slow, then slide. With challenge and exchange fic, I can get really lame and procrastinate like heck on what I should be writing. [I know, I'm completely alone in this, right?]
When I get to the point of a looming deadline, forget inspiration, it's all about grinding it out, and I turn into something of a writing automaton. Then it's a matter of hourly goals, short naps and throwing out lots of words to then turn around and mercilessly edit immediately after. I owe a lot of credit to my beta [glendaglamazon] when stories get to this place, because it makes me answerable, and because she's always there grinding things out with me. It's good to have good company during these desperate times, ah ha.
One of the fastest things I ever wrote was Snappy Popcultural Reference.... It just struck me and flowed. Whereas Journey... stalled out miserably and took forever to tinker and feel right, but I did manage to finish and not hate it, in the end. These stick nicely to the model: directly inspired [equals] quickly written, momentarily inspired to sign up for a challenge maybe I shouldn't have with a deadline in the distance [equals] pulling teeth later on.