GOOGLE: Welcome to The Writer’s Block, Sally! Thanks for sitting down by our warm fireside hearth and partaking in discussion of writing with a black and white spotted mouse.
The black and white spotted mouse is waaaay too erudite and has made me think about things in a way that I haven’t since grad school. A bill for Advil to soothe my aching brain will be sent.
I’d like to begin with some more general questions about the things that have given rise to your writing, both in terms of fanfiction and in your personal, non-fic writing. Have you always written or did you begin writing with fanfiction? Who or what influenced you to begin writing?
Okay, I’ve always written. I mean I was one of those weird kids who would staple construction paper together, doodle in some stick figures, and a few words to make a "book". I think most of my early works were written in Anglo-Saxon runes, or at least look like they were since I’m dyslexic. Among my early works, there was a cycle of "food" poems from the potty-training period, an epistolary series addressing Santa Claus and the matter of gifts, an unfinished Fairy Tale volume, and some works that were highly derivative of Laura Ingalls Wilder and Wonder Woman. I also scripted some elaborate Barbie psychodramas. In the fifth grade there was a Nancy Drew pastiche which was released to great accolades, Junior High were the Fantasy years where I wrote elaborate Tolkienesque works which were published on dittomasters in the school literary journal. Years later, I was endlessly pleased to find out that the Bronte kids had done pretty much the same thing and felt significantly less freakish.
Somebody realized that the Stang kid was wasting an awful lot of paper and made me collect everything into a "portfolio" and submit it for review for the First Governor’s School of the Arts in New Jersey. That summer I read Ginsburg for the first time, started smoking, and discovered punk music. It’s all been downhill since then.
My folks were very supportive of my creative endeavors, since they’d been beatniks and wouldn’t have known what to do if I’d had another talent – like athletics. As a matter of fact, the brief time that I played Field Hockey was a puzzlement and embarrassment for all involved; for them because they weren’t quite sure how they were supposed to react, and for me because I was always getting hurt. The nail in that coffin of my athletic period was breaking my right thumb in a scrimmage, which rendered me incapable of writing or drawing for close to a month. Fortunately, my parents steered me back on track into writing, art, and theater since I was less likely to get injured.
Many writers speak of having "influences" for their work, pieces they used to help them to establish some context for what they felt writing could or should do. For some these were teachers or formal training environments; for others, these came from their personal exposure to writing through reading or watching it played out on the screen. Do you have influences for your writing? When you look for inspiration, where do you look?
I don’t know.
I’m very strange in that I don’t try to analyze the creative process too deeply in a superstitious belief that the analysis will be post-mortem and render me incapable of creating anymore. You know the old story about the millipede? Someone asked the millipede how she managed to walk without tripping over her legs, and once she sat down and thought about it, she got so wrapped up in wondering how she managed, that she couldn’t walk anymore.
That being said, I’ve had some really good teachers. Mostly at the college level, since that was the point when teachers finally had some creditability with me. Since my mother taught high school English for decades, I became pretty contemptuous of high school English teachers after I saw how they behaved at Christmas parties.
I had three brilliant mentors in college, one for an actual creative writing class, one for 19th Century Lit, and another for Acting. Dr. "Touch me I’m" Dick pushed me to death in Creative Writing, Shakespeare, and Journalism. I still remember what he said when I handed in a quickly written short story: "This is shit. For anybody else it would be brilliant. For you, it’s shit. You need to push yourself, take chances, and do better than this. I want to see you work, I want to see you sweat. Don’t get comfortable, work hard, and when you’ve finished working hard, work harder." My 19th Century Lit Professor drilled into me the idea that writing is making commitments, and to draft, draft, and redraft. When you can’t stand it anymore, it’s done. My acting guru was all about taking things to places where people were uncomfortable. Safe is dead.
To summarize: work your ass off, don’t rest on your laurels, make commitments in your writing, drafting is good, and rattle some cages. I try to live up to those ideas.
If you had to choose a piece of your online work, which do you feel is most representative of what you’d like to accomplish with your writing? (if you could explain why, that would be great.)
I’m not going to say Iolokus because that will be covered later. At this very moment I’m just delighted with the BtVS fic "Serious Moonlight". It’s a hardcore genre piece – Buffy Meets Indiana Jones, and I just love it to death. Rivka and I tried to find every cliché of the action/adventure movie and come up with a rip-snorting plot for support. Car chases, horses, a formal dance, mummies, a burning warehouse, and there’s even a great across-the rooftops chase sequence in Luxor which ends up with a fruit cart getting overturned. You have to have the fruit cart.
God, that one’s fun. I swear I can hear the Raiders March in the background when I read it.
Though I’m sure you’ve discussed this in many different venues, I’d like to turn an eye toward "Iolokus" for a bit.
Noooo! (covers eyes with hands) Not Iolokus!
What started your writing partnership with Rivka? What was you two’s process for composing the stories?
I feel like Jack Nicholson in A Few Good Men: The Truth? You can’t handle the truth!
Seriously, I remember watching the episode, where Scully sees that her ova are being used by the Consortium to make mutant babies (I’m terrible with titles) and being profoundly pissed. Carter really missed the boat on some elements of the female psyche in a big way. I started thinking about how I would feel if I’d been Scully and that spun out into a plot line where she takes back her power over her choice to reproduce, a very political statement, really. I’d read Rivka’s stuff and found it deliciously dark and edgy and we’d corresponded a bit, so I sent her my plot outline and asked her if she was interested in collaborating. The rest, as they say, is history.
Methodology-wise, I’d generally work up a plot skeleton, send it to her and she’d add, move, change whatever she wanted. After a couple of passes, the skeleton was pretty sound and then we’d just start writing whatever scenes caught our fancy. There wasn’t any of the "you write Mulder, I’ll write Scully" division and we’d often overwrite and edit the shit out of each other’s scenes. There was no ego involved as far as "these are my words, thou shall not touch"! In the end, the only weakness was the fact that Mulder and Scully have similar voices, but we just decided that was acceptable. There was a nice disorienting factor where you weren’t initially sure which one was narrating a scene. They would think alike, since they had a similar vocabulary and educational background, and had been partners long enough that they’d taken on each other’s mannerisms of thought – the way "old marrieds" do.
I’d like to preface this next series of questions with this for context…
I was watching Joseph Campbell the other day and he was talking about the role of Myth in our culture, talking about how every culture will elevate certain stories to the status of a Myth, a text which speaks to something the culture finds to be its core values for personal achievement, definition or value. For example, you could argue that "The X-Files" was, itself, a mythological text for the culture throughout the 90’s. If you extend Campbell’s definition into the virtual world (as K. Alexander and others have done, a group of scholars who are pioneers in the development of schools of thought known as Transhumanism and Posthumanism), the Internet has become a culture, and X-Files fandom one within it. If I might be so bold, considering the polarization that "Iolokus" consistently brings when it’s discussed in a public forum (along with the familiarity-bordering-on-common-knowledge place it holds in the fandom), I would say that "Iolokus" is one of the core Myths of X-Files fanfiction.
Can you see this definition in this piece? (and incidently, I’m asking a critical question, so you are free to take my definition and operate from that – I’m the one saying it, not you, so you can take off from what I’ve said and not worry about owning the definitions or classifications yourself.) If not, how do explain the appeal – even for the ones who love to talk about how it does NOT work for them – of "Iolokus"?
The frightening thing about this question is how blindingly accurate it is.
Iolokus deliberately started out as a retelling of the Medea myth. I’m heavily into Jung and Campbell, and saw Scully as turning into this Medea/Kali figure who would destroy her children rather than give up control of them. At the same time, Rivka and I made a deliberate attempt to take the conventions of X-Files fanfic and turn them on their ass. At that point there were a lot of "first time" stories, so we had Mulder and Scully begin their sexual relationship before the story began, we concentrated on their alienation from others and from each other. We reversed the gender roles even more than they had been on the show with a highly masculinized Scully, and a rather effeminate Mulder. If you notice, Scully initiates all the violence, and Mulder initiates any attempt at emotional connection. It’s no wonder that in the first action scene she crawls through an air duct (vagina) with a rifle (penis) to shoot (penetrate) Bill who has taken the children hostage while Mulder tries to negotiate (nurture).
Lather, rinse, repeat.
In the matter of the various Mulder clones, we were playing with the meta idea that every writer has a different vision of Mulder – gay Mulder, homicidal maniac Mulder, tough Mulder, whore Mulder, and crazy Mulder. Hence the clones.
What do you think of the idea that "Iolokus" could be an Anti-Myth, a text meant to move AGAINST what we feel is the desired interpretation of these characters?
I think I just answered that.
But we had such a good time finding and pushing people’s buttons. We tried to disturb, tried to show the characters as being really, really, really damaged people. Both Rivka and I took a very juvenile pleasure in rattling cages with that. Malicious mischief, really.
You’ve moved into BtVS with your online writing. Are they any other fandoms you’re associated with in terms of your writing? What about those shows engages you? Are they the same aspects as the ones that engaged you about XF?
Well I’m a sucker for strong woman/weak man. And that pretty much sums up the whole Buffy/Spike thing. Also the perversion of the "forbidden relationship". Besides, Duchovny and Marsters are just eminently fuckable and I’m shallow as hell. If I can’t have sex with them, I’m going to make the female lead do it!
I wrote a lot of fic when I was an adolescent, and none of it will ever see the light of day online. Some fic just needs to stay in spiral notebooks, and one of the problems with the online fic community is that not everybody knows what’s webworthy and what’s not! So there will be Star Wars, Battlestar Galactica, and Doctor Who things that no one will ever see! And I’m going to deny the whole Duran Duran thing.
There have been quite a few scholars – at M.I.T. and other respected academic venues, particularly in the area of Popular Culture Studies – who have elevated Fan Writing to the level of a new form of literature. What’s your take on that?
Will they send a note to my mother saying that I haven’t wasted years of effort?
Seriously, I think fan literature goes back to the Neolithic where the tribal shaman told a story about how the sun god and the moon goddess argued and created day and night, and some clever Neolithic chick said "You know, the sun god and the earth goddess is just hot. And the sun god and the river god is totally hot." Fanfic and slash in one swell foop! Which is why we have variations on myth, the Apocrypha and Elvis sightings.
Where do you see yourself and your writing in the next, say, three to five years? What’s your ultimate goal with your work?
Royalty checks, baby!
Years ago, I said that my dearest wish was to be a famous writer, unfortunately, I neglected to mention that I’d like to be paid.
And then maybe Mom will be quiet.
And finally, so that we can put this question to rest…
If you were a tree, what kind would you be?
Well, I wouldn’t be a tree. I’d rather be a bush. Right now I have a double-blossom red hibiscus bush that I’m nursing along in Lizardville. I love that plant, it has these sexy red blooms that shine like lipstick. It’s the Catherine Zeta-Jones of bushes. I’m all about being red and lush and sexy.
Of course, I’m probably wilted bamboo, but I’d like to be a hibiscus!
Thanks so much, Mustang Sally.
Are you going to share that cheese or what?