How Will It End? Interview with Bonetree

Interviews by Fans
Title:	How Will It End? Interview with Bonetree
Interviewer:	How Will It End?
Interviewee:	Bonetree
Date(s):	2001?
Medium:	online
Fandom(s):	X-Files
External Links:	full interview is here, Archived version
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Bonetree was interviewed for the X-Files website How Will It End?.

This was part of a series. See How Will It End? Interview Series.

Some Excerpts

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'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.

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)