Interview with stylesreject
We got with stylesreject who won Best Harry, Best Au, Most Realistic, Most Unique, Favorite Couple, Best One Shot, Best Mini Fic, Best Romance, Best Drama, and Favorite Sidekick for her stories; Bring It Back, Come and Fade Me, in a parallel universe, and Room 93 for the 1D Shadow Awards Summer Edition 2016 to ask some questions!
1. You won quite a few awards this season. How does it feel to know readers enjoy your writing as much as they do?
Answer: I know, and it’s crazy! I’m honestly still in shock about it, because this time last year was when I won my first award for another one of my fics, The Story of Us, and it’s just crazy to see how much has changed. It sometimes doesn’t feel real to me to know that people around the world are actually enjoying my work, because my writing is something that I’ve kept very close to me for my whole life, so to share it and receive this kind of response is just mind blowing. Without sounding too cheesy, I can’t thank everybody enough.
2. In Come and Fade Me, how would you describe the relationship between Mira and Harry in one sentence?
Mira and Harry’s relationship is probably the most interesting one that I’ve ever written. But if I were to actually describe it in one sentence….I’d say “Mira and Harry are two people that are actually a lot more similar than they’d think.” That sentence kind of sucks, but I couldn’t really think of anything else, and that does seem to sum at least a little bit up!
3. Come and Fade Me has quite a few characters. Do you find it hard to keep up with that many characters and how they tie into the story as you write?
I knew from the start that I wanted Come and Fade Me to be a character-based story, and even though there are so many different people to write, it’s never really been a challenge for me to keep up with all of them. They all have different personalities and connections to each other, and it’s a lot of fun to see how they tie in with Mira and the story in general as it goes along.
4. What about Mira would make readers feel a connection with her?
I’ve received a lot of comments from readers telling me that they feel really connected to Mira, which means so much to me, because from the start, I’ve tried to make her a relatable character. She is nowhere near perfect, something which has been pointed out a lot, and I’m glad people are picking up on that. She’s a 20-year-old college student who’s confused about a lot of things in her life–her friends, her family, her future. On one hand, she has this overbearing family always telling her what to do and she’s tried to escape from that, but she still has this voice in her head telling her that she needs to be better, which is something that I think a lot of people relate to. Another example is her racial identity and a lot of the confusion people have surrounding it. I think that race is a subject that hasn’t really been touched up on very much in fic, but it is a big part of my life, being a brown Arab-American, and so I wanted to channel a lot of that into Mira. How she’ll always be getting comments like “where are you really from”, that have affected me a lot in my life, seem to have affected lots of other readers too. For me, Mira is a character that represents many different things and isn’t afraid to speak out about them, and to see so many readers connect with that is probably one of the best things about writing this story.
5. Let’s move on to Bring It Back. This story won Most Unique. What do you think makes it so unique?
I think the main thing that makes Bring It Back so unique is its concept. When I was coming up with it, the first idea that I had was I wanted to write a story where Harry wasn’t as happy as he seems to be in other fics. I realized I couldn’t really do very much with that, especially since there were already so many other fantastic stories like that, and so I came up with the idea of having him go to university to try to run away from this life that he didn’t want anymore. But something has happened, something that the whole world knows about–but the readers don’t just yet–that has made it impossible for him to escape who he was, and I think that’s kind of what makes it so different.
6. Sum up Norah in 3 words. Sum up Harry in 3 words.
Hmm. For Norah, I think I’d do insecure, introverted, and emotional. For Harry, he’s guarded, insecure like Norah, and he doesn’t trust easily (that’s not one word, but still).
7. Harry is a celebrity going back to university. Can you give a little insight into how he feels others see him without giving away too much?
At first, it was easy to imagine how most people would think a celebrity going back to university would feel, but I knew that with Harry, I would have to go deeper than that. There are all these issues of his past that he tries so hard to keep locked up, but with him, everyone in the world already thinks that they know everything about him. They judge him based on what they’ve read online, and he’s so used to having people around him want things from him, because that has essentially been his life since he was sixteen, and so he is always quick to jump to conclusions whenever he meets new people–that they don’t want to know the real him, they just want a piece of “Harry Styles”, which has happened far too often to him in his life.
8. Now for in a parallel universe. This is, yet another, university fic. Do you enjoy writing stories with a university setting?
I really do! I think that stories set in college are probably right in the middle of my comfort zone, which is why I like to write them so much. The only problem with university fics, at least for me, is that so many people are writing them so you always have to try and find a way to make yours different, which I hope I’ve succeeded with.
9. Describe Quinn and Harry’s relationship in one word.
Easygoing. Or natural. Both work, I think.
10. What author(s) and/or stories have inspired you the most in your writing?
For books, I get a lot of my inspiration when writing fic from two of my favorite contemporary authors, Rainbow Rowell and Deb Caletti. They’re both so skilled at keeping an interesting plot while having a different, diverse group of characters revolving around it and I’m always inspired by them. For fic authors, though, Boys Don’t Cry by oxygenstyles and Sugar on the Asphalt by aboutfalling are probably the two fics that have changed me, my writing, and my life in general. I love those stories and I’ve probably reread them a million times.
11. Where can readers discover more about you?
If you’d like to hear me complain, talk about books or TV (or need recommendations), or cry about Harry Styles, you can find me at paynethecreator.tumblr.com where my inbox is always open!!