Quidditch Pitch Interview with Risiepookie

Interviews by Fans
Title:	Quidditch Pitch Interview with Risiepookie
Interviewer:
Interviewee:	Risiepookie
Date(s):	August 2007
Medium:	online
Fandom(s):	Harry Potter
External Links:	interview is here, Archived version
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In 2007, Risiepookie was interviewed for The Quidditch Pitch.

See Quidditch Pitch Interview Series.

Some Excerpts

I stumbled upon fan fiction when I did a Google search for Ron/Hermione and The Quidditch Pitch was the first website on the page. Curious, I clicked the link and was enthralled that all of these wonderful stories existed! I was amazed at the creativity of the pairings and the various descriptions and summaries of the fic. I remember spending the next day and a half reading and saving as many stories as possible to my hard drive for a long plane ride I was about to take. I was hooked pretty much from the moment I clicked onto TQP’s homepage. During my trip, a couple story ideas came to mind and I began to jot them down in the notebook I always keep with me. For a couple of the stories, I had a pretty good idea of what I would want to see, so I wrote out an outline for each other them. I decided to challenge myself to write my preliminary thoughts into an opening chapter, as a way of psychologically and emotionally working through some personal experiences- this eventually became Wake Me. On a whim, I wanted to see if it would be accepted. It was and the rest is history.

The first fan fiction I read was BelovedRanger’s Clean Sweep series. It is one of my favourites to this day. I also really enjoy just about anything by Solstice (especially Within These Walls and Without Walls) and Emmilyne (especially Of Hearts and Heroes, which I really hope she finishes). I think the person in fandom with the best word craft is Thevina. I can’t possibly list all of my favourites, otherwise this response would be several pages long. Suffice it to say there are some very, very talented writers in this fandom and we are lucky to have all of them share their creativity with us.

Hermione is very easy for me to write. I find that almost anything from her POV flows out of me quickly and I have very little characterization problems with her. I feel very similarly with Ron, though I definitely have to work harder on his characterization than hers. However, I find it basically impossible to write Luna, which is a real shame, because I love her character. I can’t seem to get into the same head space that she occupies. It unfortunate, because I’ve wanted to have her in a couple of my fics, but it just wasn’t going to happen.

It’s funny, but in this age of computers, I still write nearly everything by hand and then transcribe it over to my laptop. I do most of my pre-beta editing by hand before the words ever reach a computer screen. There is something about having a pen in my hand and having contact with the paper that helps my creativity to flow. I will write directly on my laptop in some instances, but that rarely happens with any of my heavy angst fics. Since I typically write in my notebook though, any environment can become an opportunity for me to write if an idea strikes me.