Chronicle X Interview with Justin Glasser

Interviews by Fans
Title:	Chronicle X Interview with Justin Glasser
Interviewer:	uncredited
Interviewee:	Justin Glasser
Date(s):	January 1999
Medium:	online
Fandom(s):	X-Files
External Links:	Interview with Justin Glasser (Chronicle X); copy
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Chronicle X Interview with Justin Glasser was conducted in 1999 by the Chronicle X archive.

Some Excerpts

I got online about a year or two ago, and was browsing when I came across the fanfic discussion on aol. They pointed me some places and I started reading the stories. Of course, some of them were *horrible* and some of them were just amazing, and I thought "well, I can do that," so I did. I do rely on the show for inspiration though, in that I don't try to write things about the X-Files, but wait for something to hit me before I start a story. I also am not a big bandwagon writer, meaning that you won't see me coming out with a story about an episode that has just aired for the most part. There's not anything wrong with those stories (in fact, some of them are spectacular), but I just don't work that fast!

Canonical. In every way. I see my fanfic as an elaboration on the show, which is why the Mulder and Scully I write won't be doing stuff they couldn't do on the show. So my stuff is heavy on the UST, but there's very little actual physical interaction in them. It's not that I don't love MSR ('cause boy I do!), but that I can't get my mind around it in order to write it. In my real writing, my characters are my own, so I can construct them to do (most) of the things I want them to do, but Mulder and Scully have a past that I haven't given them, so I feel obligated to be bound by it. A more bitter (or more imaginative) person would say that my XF writing is limited or constrained, but I prefer to think of it as, um, true to the source material. Sure, that's it. Just call me Hester. ;)

I've read volumes and volumes and volumes. I used to go through Gossamer page by page and pick the stuff that looked interesting from the summary or the title. One of the earliest pieces I read was 12 Degrees by Paula on a recommendation. That story really opened my eyes to the wealth of possibilities in fanfic.

Some of my novels have soundtracks--I mean, there are certain things I listen to when I write them that convey the right ambiance to get the juices flowing. When I write fanfic though, I don't listen to music (in my opinion, CC has no idea what kind of music goes with the X-files if the two soundtracks he's organized are any indication). I have almost all of the episodes on tape so I play them in the background when I write fanfic. I think it makes my dialogue more accurate as well.