9 questions with porcupine-girl

This week: @porcupine-girl talks getting past the first draft; super observant readers, and why you need to know the rules before you can break them.



ASS: What do you most enjoy about writing fanfiction?



porcupine-girl: First off is probably the social aspect of it. When I started hanging out in a fic writer IRC channel, I started writing more steadily. My favorite comments on my fic are the ones that give me things to respond to, and that even lead to conversations, and I love doing the same in other people’s fic. I like finding people and connecting with people both through just fandom in general but also because we read each other’s fic.

Second place is probably the fact that I often write a fic because I want to read that fic, and so once I write it, it exists and I can read it, which is nice. Way more work than when someone else writes a fic for me to read, but that’s how it goes.



What aspects of writing do you find difficult when you write fanfiction?



I’m writing one right now where I’m planning to do LOTS of editing - I don’t just have a list of edits to make, I have a list of editing passes to make which include things like adding entire subplots. And it is so hard for me to stay motivated and finish that first draft when honestly it kinda sucks as-is. I mean, I bet I could put it on AO3 and people would read it and enjoy it, but it has a lot of structural and other problems and I would not be happy with it. So it’s really hard to stop thinking about how much it sucks now and just get that “zero draft” done, because I rarely write things with the intention of this much future editing.



Have you ever received hateful comments on your fic and how do you deal with it?



Luckily, not really. I’ve only received a handful of negative comments, and none of them were truly hateful. Anytime I get a critical comment, I take it seriously. I think about the criticism, look back over the fic and decide if I agree with it. Usually I’m happy with the way I wrote it, and explain why it’s written that way. It would be nice if people would just let it go after that, but for some reason people who leave such comments often seem to also be people who feel the need to keep arguing with me about my opinion of my own writing, and at some point I just have to be like, sorry it’s not your cup of tea, but that’s the fic, and move on.



One criticism I did agree with was when someone pointed out that I’d played into a racial stereotype in a scene. I apologized, and said I hadn’t even known that was a stereotype when I’d written the fic a few months before, and that I planned on watching out for that in future fics.

Conversely: what’s been some of your favorite feedback on your fanfic?

“I laughed, I cried, I got off.” - Literally a comment I got once, perfection.

I (and all fic writers) LOVE it when people point out specific lines or things that they liked. I also love it when people ask me questions, because like I said I enjoy comment conversations. I’ve also recently noticed that sometimes people will notice things in the fic that I hadn’t really been consciously aware that I was doing, but once someone points it out I’m like, oh yeah, maybe it wasn’t on purpose but it wasn’t an accident either, more like a natural result of what I was doing on purpose that I just hadn’t considered by itself. Which is super cool, and proof that the artist’s intention is definitely not the be-all and end-all of interpreting a piece of art.



How do you handle writer’s block?

Thankfully, I rarely have full-on can’t-write-a-damn-thing writer’s block. Sometimes I’ll feel stuck on a particular fic, though. Sometimes jumping to a different scene helps (I’m not always a particularly linear writer), sometimes just writing whatever comes to mind with the understanding that I’ll cut most of it later helps me find my way into the stuff that I actually want there. Occasionally I need to write on something else for a bit to clear my head, but that can be dangerous because you might not go back to the original fic!



Which Supernatural fanfic of yours are you most proud of and why?

“Proud of” is a weird thing. There are two that I might be willing to say I’m “proud of” - one is This Isn’t Where We Intended to Be. It’s one of my earlier fics, and my goal for it was to get further into Cas’s head because I felt like I usually relied too heavily on dialogue. I think I was really successful there, and it helped my future writing. Plus I feel like the structure of the fic came together really nicely, without my having to break it down and think specifically about structure too much.

The other is Unwritten, the ABO fic I wrote for DCBB 2015. That one, mostly because I did so much research and worldbuilding for it - I wanted a somewhat biologically and sociologically plausible ABO world, and so I kind of had to make up the mechanics from scratch. And I managed to deconstruct some tropes on the way, which is my favorite.

What/who has had the biggest influence on your writing?

God, I really have no idea, I’m really bad at paying attention to that sort of thing. I mean, right now my fic specifically is probably most influenced by other fic writers, but I’m not sure I could say who has influenced it the most. I’ve never been good at reading flowery prose with a whole ton of imagery, so I don’t really write that way, either, is like the closest I can get.

What are you currently working on?

I’ve mostly been writing Check Please! fics lately, which I think has caused some people who follow me for destiel to give up on me (even though really it has only been a few months since I last posted a destiel fic). But I’ve got a sequel to an old SPN fic that I’ve actually been sitting on for two years, meaning to edit and post it, that I’ve finally gotten around to editing, so hopefully that will be up sometime soon. :)

If you could give one piece of advice to a new and/or struggling writer, what would it be?

I guess if I’m limited to one piece of advice, it would be to find a community to keep you motivated. For me, it’s an IRC channel. For some people, it’s a group chat on Twitter or some friends on tumblr who hang out in each other’s gdocs or whatever. I’m going to go ahead and plug where I chat - it’s #antidiogenes on the server irc.slashnet.org, and full instructions if you have no clue how to IRC are at @antidiogenes. It was originally for Sherlock writers, but now people hang out there to write fic for all sorts of fandoms, plus original fic. It’s a very friendly place, new faces are always welcome!

If I had a second piece of advice, it’s if you actually want to improve, read about writing and make a concerted effort to apply the advice. It’s easy to read writing advice and think “but my style is just different, I’m the exception” - but the fact is, you generally have to know how to follow a rule in order to know how to break it well. At least prove to yourself that you can follow it for one fic, then decide if you really want to throw it out the window entirely or if maybe it does help sometimes.

Here be awesome…

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