Content Creator Interviews 2019: Master List (Complete with gratuitous gif of Sherlock looking hot, just because)
As some of you know, early this year a group of people in the Sherlock and Sherlolly fandom got together to conduct a series of interviews focusing on fan content and its creation. The result was twelve interviews, posted over three months, where writers and artists talk about their work, the fandom and show, and their own processes. I’ve finally gotten around to doing a master list of them to make it easier for anyone who’d like to read through them. Check out the links below:
OhAine interviews likingthistoomuch
Likingthistoomuch interviews OhAine
theleftpill interviews kstewmanipulation
thisisartbylexie interviews writingwife-83
ellis-hendricks interviews geekmama
geekmama interviews ellis-hendricks
ashockinglackofsatin interviews sunken-standard
vermofftiss interviews mizjoely
writingwife-83 interviews artbylexie
OhAine interviews ashockinglackofsatin
lilsherlockian75 and mrsmcrieff interview each other
Hello folks and happy Friday! We’re back, and this time @likingthistoomuch interviews @ohaine (aka, me) so I’m jumping straight into the interview because it’s awkward af to introduce yourself.
Trigger warnings: here be brief discussions of grief and mourning, and because it’s me, there’s also some bad language. Sorry.
OhAine: She arts, she fics, now you can add witty limericks to her repertoire for she is truly an accomplished young lady; because when the question of how to introduce me for this interview came up likingthistoomuch chose to write a poem.
It goes like this:
She is smart
She has sass
Thinks her writing isn’t good
Someone get her head outta her ass.
Charming. And as that isn’t massively helpful to anyone reading, I’ll flesh it out a bit for you. My name is Áine (yes, my pseud is that imaginative), I’m Irish, married to a tall, curly haired Brit (no, not *that* tall, curly haired Brit). I’m a professional doer of double entry (that means I’m an accountant not a p0rn star, get your dirty minds out of the gutter), an amateur writer who is obsessed with Sherlock and Sherlolly to a point that isn’t dignified. I’m the mod of this interview project, and also of the MaybeItsJustMyType Collection on AO3, a double SAMFA winner (yay me!) and I also won a Community Games gold medal when I was eight ( @hobbitsdoitbetter will know what that is, but she’s literally the only one of you who will) for a picture I drew in crayon of a cat jumping over a skipping rope (although if I’m honest I think everyone who entered the competition got a prize so I really don’t know if I should brag too much about it.) Currently I’m in the market for someone who’ll do a better job of my eulogy than I’ve done with this intro, so maybe it’s best if I stop talking now and we just move along with the questions… Ahem… Gee it’s back to you.
likingthistoomuch: I’m going to start with Kat (aka satin_doll, aka @ashockinglackofsatin) who’s submitted a few reader questions if you’re ready.
OhAine: Sure. Shoot.
satin_doll: The Fate of Glass is one of the most beautiful and touching stories I’ve ever read dealing with grief and the aftermath of the death of a character. It also illustrates perfectly Molly’s relationship with Sherlock from her side. We know you were dealing with your own loss when this was written. How much of your writing springs from your own real life emotional experiences?
OhAine: Well first, thank you dear heart. It’s a tricky question to answer because The Fate of Glass is unique for me. I wrote it and ‘Where the Lost Things Go’ in the same two week period, at a time when I was really struggling to accept what had happened to Kieren. Funnily enough, Gee (likingthistoomuch) and I were talking only a few weeks ago, and I told her this: for the only time I can ever remember doing, I put my words into Sherlock’s mouth. The bit where they’re sitting on the floor, smoking and talking about Mrs H, where Sherlock finally says what’s on his mind – that he’d failed her – was exactly what I felt at that moment about Kiki’s death. I drew on something deeply personal in a way I hadn’t done since ‘Take me and erase me’ and the death of Molly and Sherlock’s son. Initially that story was me working through my feelings and grief, but after the first draft I had to abandon that agenda and remember that this was about Sherlock and Molly now. The real life experience of survivor’s guilt, of losing someone you love was there, but oddly Molly’s rebuttal to Sherlock’s assertions about blame were very much me too, they came from my father’s loss, and that reconciling a terrible end with a life well lived and full of love. Of all my stories, it’s the closest to describing my actual experience in a given context.
I suppose in the first instance, what you write has be honest, authentic. That doesn’t mean that it has to come from your experience directly, but if you have the framework there for something that you want to say, then you use it. There are small bits of me in all of my stories, but I can’t rely on my own emotional experiences too heavily because then I’m limiting the characters. What I’ve found you can do is take the essence of an emotion, distil it down to its component parts and feelings, and then apply them to a different situation. Your job when writing a story is to tell someone else’s story, so you have to be able to extrapolate beyond your own experiences. But if you can ground that in something real, it somehow gives it a ring of truth that wouldn’t otherwise be there.
satin_doll: Amor Vincit Omnia is quite simply devastatingly beautiful, despite the pain that runs through it from beginning to end. You’re so adept at writing Molly’s steadfastness and loyalty despite Sherlock’s rough treatment of her over the years and it seems to be a recurrent theme in your stories. Can you talk a little about where this picture of Molly comes from, how she developed as a character in your head?
OhAine: We get so little of Molly on screen, and in a way that’s a blessing: we have so much room for interpretation, so many directions we can take her in, you know? But something Mofftiss have gone to pains to point out is that not only is Molly loyal to the bone, but that Sherlock trusts her loyalty in a way that he doesn’t trust anyone else’s.
You have to be careful how you allow her to give that loyalty, it can’t be done in a way that demeans her, or would make her bitter. In order for that not to happen you have to imagine why someone would give so much in the face of – what you termed – rough treatment. I’ve come to the conclusion that although she’s sometimes hurt by it, impatient with it, she views his actions not as intentional, but rather as him simply not knowing how to do things any differently. He’s ever so gentle with her in TEH, when no one else is around to see, and that episode informs so much of what I imagine their between-the-scenes life to be like: he shows respect for her, love, affection, he respects her mind, her opinions, he is eternally grateful for all that she has done for him, and grateful that despite everything he’s done she still allows him to call her friend.
Sherlock asks in TRF, ‘If I wasn’t everything you think I am, everything that I think I am, would you still want to help me?’ and Molly doesn’t hesitate, she’s straight in with ‘What do you need?’ She has zero doubts about the man that he is.
Earlier in that episode she says, ‘You’re a bit like my dad,’ going on to tell Sherlock about how her dad behaved when he was dying, and I think that’s a very under rated line. I think it shows that to Molly he’s more than – what other’s call him – the great detective, machine, freak. It shows she sees the man beneath. She sees that he is more than the sum of his parts. She’s telling him that she sees his humanity.
She doesn’t want to change him into someone he’s not. She sees deeper, she sees the bits of him that he guards, the parts of him that are just like you and me. Molly’s not blinded by his brilliance. To her he’s just a man, albeit one who has a very special gift.
Even when she says ‘Why do you always say such horrible things?’ she’s not treating him like a bold puppy and smacking him on the nose with a rolled up newspaper like the others do, she’s attempting to understand him, perhaps even asking him to try to understand himself.
He’s a very vulnerable man, and she treats him with care because of that. His actions weigh on her I think, they have a cost, but it’s one she chooses to accept and she doesn’t punish him for her choice.
It can be argued that Molly is the only one who loves him just for him. Lestrade wants his brain; Mycroft sees him as an asset; John is a junkie, Sherlock his dealer; Mary takes his help; Hudders once took help from him. But amongst those who take, there’s only one person who takes nothing. Molly.
I suppose the other large part of her development in my mind is the ethical code that she’s had instilled into her from an early stage of her education. Medical ethics, and the application of deontological and utilitarian principles in her everyday decision making, must have influenced the person she became by the time we meet her. There are four major principles at play for her: do good, avoid doing harm, be fair, and respect individual autonomy. And I think it’s those principles of fairness and respect that she applies to her relationship with Sherlock. I think she respects his mind, his abilities, even his education (because they have components of their formal education in common), but I think it’s fairness that she applies most liberally: he is unique, different, and he lacks certain skills when it comes to interacting with others, Molly takes his treatment of her in that context.
satin_doll: In Take Me and Erase Me, one of your earliest stories, you mention Lorca (the Spanish poet) and you’ve made numerous references to poetry since you started posting fics. What else besides poetry and fanfic do you read these days? What do you see as the biggest influences on your writing?
OhAine: Biggest influences. Honestly? Stephen (both of the King and Moffat varieties) have said that the best advice they could give aspiring writers was to read as much as you can of the kind of thing you want to write, and I’ve found that to be so true. The Sustain Stories are probably the single biggest influence on my interpretation of Sherlock and Molly. I remember saying it to someone once (I think it was actually you Kat) that I’ve been writing Sustain fanfiction rather than Sherlock fanfiction all these years. It was that big a deal for me.
As for what I’m reading now… I always have a few books on the go, currently open are Leonard Cohen’s Book of Longing (Jesus, the raw intensity of his imagery), Tom Robbins’ Even Cowgirls Get the Blues (the absurdity of it appeals to me) and James Joyce’s Dubliners (The Dead is my favourite short story ever, so I finally decided to read the rest of the book).
Thank you Kat for your lovely questions x
likingthistoomuch: Going all the way back to the beginning, what prompted you to start writing fanfic in the first place? Where did that first impulse come from?
OhAine: I’d never heard of fanfic until I became obsessed by Sherlock, but once I found it, it was like falling down a rabbit hole. I read. And I read and I read and I read. When I first found Sherlolly in mid-2014 there were about 3,000 stories in the tag on AO3 and I went about systematically reading them all in descending order from the largest hit. It took me about six months or so to get through them and then I hit a wall, there was nothing left to read. But by then I started seeing Sherlolly everywhere: in every song I heard, every poem I read… and at the time I was living away from home while doing a master’s degree, and I remember so clearly driving back to my little flat outside Galway one night after a late lecture and Lana del Rey’s Young and Beautiful came on the radio, and it was like, BANG!, this fully formed story of an insecure Sherlock hit me. It was so clear, so well defined and complete, and it wouldn’t leave me alone. The end result was Saving for a rainy day, and the other two stories in The Dance series.
Honourable mention too at this point to @sundance201 and her beautiful fic Hello My Old Heart. That story was the beginning of my love affair with music in fanfiction, I started my Sherlolly playlist with the song it references and I don’t know if I would have ever made the connection between music and writing without it. So blame Sundance201 :P
Likingthistoomuch: When you wrote your first fic how did that process go? Did you have someone review the work? Also, when did you share the fact that you had attempted fanfiction with someone around you?
OhAine: As above. No, it was a type and go thing. Literally. I have no idea what madness overtook me to actually post it on the internet where other real live people would see it. It was (still is) full of mistakes, and reads like an outline rather than an actual story, but I knew no better at the time. It was the first piece of fiction I’d ever written, and I had zero expectations that anyone would read it. I bawled like a baby when the first comment came in.
Anyway, it was a Sunday morning, and I was staying at Uni that weekend because I had exams the following week, hubby was coming that day to see me and make sure I hadn’t died under a pile of textbooks and fast-food containers. When he arrived I showed him the post on AO3, and he was so sweet. He still reads all of my fics, gives me feedback and suggestions. He’s even got an AO3 account now so that he can leave kudos. Bless him. He’s still the only one I share with.
Likingthistoomuch: You are amongst the few who seem to write comic themed, angsty, fluff as well as explicit with ease. At least that’s how it comes across. Which genre is the easiest for you and which one would you prefer to write as, say an outlet for real life pressures?
OhAine: I’m shocked that it comes across that way, because writing doesn’t come easily for me at all. I’m not a writer, I’m an auditor who writes when she has time. Every single word is like squeezing that last bit of toothpaste from the tube, and although I’m a very verbal person words are not my strong point. My vocabulary is technical and that’s fine when I’m writing reports and letters for work, but I don’t have an emotional vocabulary so I have to work really hard at finding the words to describe the feelings I want to write. And I’m not a fluffy person so writing anything sweet is like pulling teeth for me. None of it’s easy, but Molly and Sherlock are in my bones now so I keep doing it.
I suppose comedy and angst are slightly less of a struggle. But comedy is a tricky one, because you’re either in the right frame of mind to write it or you’re not. It can’t be forced, you can’t make something funny if it’s not.
I don’t have a favourite genre, and none of them come naturally, but if it’s a question of what’s an outlet, then I’d say all of them serve an equal purpose, although the most satisfying to get right is definitely angst, even if it’s a rare jewel. I think I’ve only ever managed to get it almost right twice, maybe three times: Amor Vincit Omnia, The Fate of Glass and possibly A Sunset Bird in Winter. I kind of hold those three up as times when I was happy with the finished product.
Likingthistoomuch: How do you plan out your work? Do you plan the end, the beginning and what’s in the middle before you start posting?
OhAine: Bold of you to assume I plan!!!!
The beauty of writing (mostly) one-shots is that you’re presenting a finished piece. I’ve written just one multi, Take me and erase me, and that was done completely on the fly. I was so traumatised by the whole thing that I’ve been put off for life.
When it comes to the one-shots, I usually have a pretty good idea what the beginning, middle and end are before I begin – even if the end result turns out to be something else entirely. I do a first draft, then revise, revise, revise until the flow feels good and I think I’m saying what it is I set out to say.
Likingthistoomuch: You work with a beta - do you share the entire plot of your fic and discuss before you start the writing process? How does that work?
OhAine: It works differently with different people. When Kiki and I worked together, every detail was shared and there were masses of emails over and back discussing plot and structure. A three thousand word doc could come back with fifteen hundred extra words of notes. She had an opinion about everything. It worked because we were each other’s beta, and we’d built up a rapport and trust. She was never afraid to offend me and I loved that about her. She was also very verbal, so feedback was always detailed, she’d be very clear about the whys of it. We were both new, both learning, so that extra communication was great to get. And I genuinely miss being a beta for her.
Kat on the other hand has a light touch approach, she gives me a far longer leash and lets me express myself – just myself and my ideas. If I have a specific concern I’ll share that with her, and she’ll give me advice and her opinion. What I tend to share with Kat is what I’m hoping to achieve, and she’ll let me know if, in her opinion, I’ve done what I set out to do. She trusts me more as a writer, if you know what I mean.
likingthistoomuch: I am heavily influenced by Bollywood songs and get one shot ideas by the ton. Kat mentioned your love of poetry, and I wondered has there been a poem that literally made you wanna rush home and write down stuff as soon as possible?
OhAine: Oh that was Where The Lost Things Go, by Anne Casey. She wrote an entire book of poetry about loss (in particular losing her mother) and it makes for a devastating read. When I heard her recite that poem:
“We sat upon a golden bow, my little bird and I, indivisibly apart, we dived into the sky. And to the purple-hearted dark, an ocean we did cry, for all the lost things gathered there, in rooms beyond the eye.”
I could see Sherlock and his little bird crying for the things they’ve lost, things hidden in secret places. I’d had the image for ages and ages of a little girl coming to Sherlock with a case, but the story that went with it never presented itself. Stories are like that sometimes, bits of them linger until the right structure comes to you. The fic came out in one draft, I did minor revisions later, but it was just this one thing all of its own from the start. And it was sort of the poem coming to me at a time when I was grieving too, and it fitted so well with this image I had of Watson in her big boots and pink hair. Everything coalesced into a coherent story. The end result was my own ‘Where the lost things go.’
Generally that isn’t how it works for me. I usually take away just an image or a phrase, sometimes just a feeling, and I try to structure something around it. But like you, I get a lot from music (Elbow’s music could be the official soundtrack of Sherlolly) and movies as well as poems
Likingthistoomuch: Let’s be honest here, you get tons of reviews. I know, I read most of them (turn down that stalker alarm!!!). Has your story ever been influenced by a comment given on the initial chapters of a multi fic? Not the plot per say, but maybe a small scene or interaction?
OhAine: No, I really don’t think so. But then there’s really only ever been one multi of any real significance, Take me and erase me, and the initial chapters of that got very few comments, or even hits for that matter (chapter one got 17 hits on its first day, but I stuck with it and it did okay in the end). What does happen with comments is they encourage me to keep going, to keep writing, especially when I feel like I’m just rubbish at this. I’ve been blessed with people who are generous and kind when it comes to egging me on and making me feel okay about what I’ve written. I tend to be very sure about where I want to go when I write something, and I think that if you allow things to intrude on the picture you have in your mind you run the risk of ending up with something that’s a bit all over the place. The reader you write for is you, and you either live or die by it.
Likingthistoomuch: In your fic “The Pinch Hitter” (I absolutely love the Simple Chemistry series) there is dialogue that has the potential to turn the fic any way you want:
“I don’t want you because I’m lonely, you little moron.” He shouts, full to breaking point with impotent frustration and clawing at his own hair. "I'm lonely because I want you!"
Funny and yet heart wrenchingly raw. Did you work specifically on introducing something like that, which can be a palate changer for a moment?
OhAine: Oh boy, tough question. Short answer is no, I wasn’t looking specifically for that line. The prompt for this fic came to me by way of a pinch hitter assignment in the 2017 Sherlolly Fic exchange, and I had about four days to come up with a story that fitted the brief. I work at a snail’s pace under normal circumstances, and I was under so much pressure to get something done. I’d pissed away three of the four days on a fic that I couldn’t make work (still can’t, *sigh*) and in desperation I turned to the next prompt on the list of four. In the end this one just came out, and I’m lucky it’s as okay as it is given the rush it was written in. That line: if I recall, it came out of some wanky meta that was doing the rounds at the time, the mirror theory, and I guess that line is my response to it. He wasn’t running to her because she was a surrogate, she, Molly, was the reason he ran to Molly.
On the other hand, that line is very much part of my overall head canon for Sherlock in the series. He’s the cause of his own isolation and I remember either Moffat or Gatiss saying that he was like a child pressed up against a sweet shop, window, longing. I see him very much that way. He doesn’t make friends because he’s lonely – the loneliness is part of the choices he’s made – but he acutely feels loneliness now because he finally understands friendship and love. Does that make sense??
I don’t seem to be able to do straight comedy, there’s always a little angst with my absurdity, a little absurdity with my angst. Some of that is to do with wanting to introduce contrast, some of it is because I think the show does that too and when I’m writing, to some extent, I’m trying to emulate that style.
Likingthistoomuch: On the topic of light works or ones with a comedic thread, you seem to have mastered the tough-as-nails art of writing genuinely funny work which is not slapstick by a mile. Is the writing process for that different than your other works?
OhAine: It is. Totally. I can’t decide to write something funny. It either is or it isn’t, and I don’t have much control over that. No amount of revisions will make something that’s not funny work as a comedy piece. I tried that once with The Truth Will Set You Free, and I think it was 20+ drafts before it started to get giggles from my beta. That was when I realised that trying to be funny wouldn’t work. Kiki said to me after that one was posted that she thought I was rubbish at comedy, which was strange given how often I made her laugh in my emails. It dawned on me then to just be myself, write in a more naturalistic tone and focus on being absurd instead of laugh out loud slapstick.
The next one I tried my hand at was The Adventure of the Berenstein Baby. I took a different approach and wrote it as though I was telling a friend about something hubs and I did, using the exact same style I’d use in conversations (like the side bar thing, my emails are famous for them, I go off on so many tangents) and the result was one draft with minor revisions to get the finished product. When that fic won the 2017 SAMFA for humour, I almost died of pride.
Likingthistoomuch: The Fate of Glass, that letter, that fabulous, fabulous, piece of work. How long did you take you write that?
OhAine: The first draft contained all the bones of the story, it was 1,700 words long and it came out in one afternoon. The letter was there right from the start, always at the end. The rest needed much more work, I think I added another 2,000 words during revisions. I have a memory of it being an easy one to write, but I had a week off work that January, and I know I spent at least another 40 hours picking at it during my leave. It had the story right off the bat, but none of the detail. My vocabulary isn’t what I’d like it to be, so when I feel I don’t have the words to tell a story I read. I had an anthology of Pablo Neruda’s poetry on the arm of my Queen Anne, and every night I’d read for an hour or so, and the next day I’d have the words I needed. Reading, for me, is sort of an ignition tool, it sort of opens that part of my brain that isn’t bogged down with technical language, it opens up my creative side. I sometimes forget just how many revisions even the easy stories take. I forget sometimes that I have to work hard at it, but I do.
Likingthistoomuch: When it comes to naming you work, how do you plan that out?
OhAine: More bold assumptions about planning!!!!
Sometimes a story has an obvious title, like The Science of Seduction (because it was about the application of mathematical theories to love and relationships, so it just seemed obvious). Others, like Better, or The last person you’d think of, they were obvious because the whole story is geared toward making the point that these phrases represent. When I find a name I want to use I do an AO3 search of the Sherlock/Molly tag just to be sure no one else is using it (or has used it for a very long time).
Names are something I struggle with, and at the beginning I went almost exclusively with lines from songs, but I’ve stopped doing that now because it felt, I don’t know, a little forced? These days I try to make a stronger connection between the story and the title without making it too wordy or over explaining what’s going on in the story. I often have a placeholder title while I’m working on it, but keep trying out new ones as I go to see how they fit.
Don’t ever underestimate the power of a good title: along with the summary they’re your elevator pitch to the reader. A brilliant story can be sunk by a bland title or bland summary.
Likingthistoomuch: How do you gauge the success of your work?
OhAine: Oh jeepers. I’m a numbers girl, so the stats page on my AO3 account is my enemy LOL. I’ve tried to find my own metrics, because it’s easy to fall into the trap of judging success on hits and kudos when there are so many things that can influence those little numbers. Like, Trial by Existence was a failure if you go by the stats, but I still feel in my gut that it’s a strong fic, and I learned so much about writing from it. Anyway. There’s a bunch of things I ask myself during the inevitable post-mortem: first and foremost, did I say what I wanted to say? Did I convey the message that I was attempting to put out there? But then I also consider was the quality up to standard, did I build on my learning from the last thing that I wrote? If it’s a gift work, did I please the person it was gifted to? In terms of grammar and punctuation, phrasing (none of which are my strong suit) have I improved? And though I never set out meaning to, I start to fret about the stats…
But I also think that if someone has said in the comments that they’d love to see more of this particular story, then you’ve succeeded in making something that someone else connected with. That’s always a really important metric for me.
Likingthistoomuch: Coming to the topic of Social Media, what effect does that have on your work? Have you ever faced rude reviews or comments or called out for offending people? Because we know, if you log in, someone somewhere is offended.
OhAine: And I specialise in offending people LOL it’s why I stay off social media for the most part.
Everyone gets the odd rude comment, I think. It’s the risk you sign on for when you put something out into a public space. I try hard not to take those personally.
It seems to me people are looking for a fight and they don’t care what it’s about. I’ve come to the conclusion that no matter how convinced I am of my position or opinion, if there’s even a hint of aggression I walk away because to engage with them is just giving them what they want. Don’t add fuel to the fire, you know? And it’s not my job to educate. It just isn’t. So I do what’s healthy for me, and I avoid the nonsense even when I know I’m right and they’re not. I don’t need to explain myself to strangers.
Having those things said, I wouldn’t trade away the positives of social media just to be rid of the negatives. I’ve found fantastic friends on sites like AO3 and tumblr, I get so much from our little community and the lovely people in it. I suppose the Sherlolly community is lucky: we’re small, able to self-regulate, and the people here are genuine and kind. I’ve learned so much, gotten so much joy from writing, so much from reading, the beautiful artwork that’s posted here, and my fellow shippers… I’m grateful for that, so that’s where I keep my focus.
Likingthistoomuch: As per the new guideline, the blue hellsite will not allow explicit work to be posted. Does that make you want to write more E rated stuff, in a virtual Up Yours to Staff?
OhAine: I gave up on writing E-rated fics two years ago, and I suppose I am kind of sad that I don’t anymore because I would dearly love to say to anyone who tries to censor others to go fuck themselves.
On the one hand, the ban doesn’t really affect me because I don’t create that kind of content anymore, so I could just be tempted to shrug my shoulders and move on. But. It affects others who do create that kind of content, and I’ll support them all the way, not only because they should be allowed freedom of expression, but also because the purge is part of a bigger problem: the suppression of freedoms, under the guise of protecting the innocent, and is driven by a puritanical streak that’s becoming pervasive in our culture, one that is more about control and suppression of free ideas than protection. Tumblr is lying to us, pure and simple. They could deal with the p0rn problem but they don’t, and therefore you have to assume this isn’t about p0rnbots: this is about commercial considerations, and the suppression of creativity that they can’t commercialise. It’s also very telling that the ban is overly focused on the female body (and I can’t help but feel that because a good percentage of content creators are women, that the purge conveniently silences women’s voices) and the ideal of womanhood held by a very narrow band of its user base.
Historically, censorship (and that is what this is) doesn’t lead us anywhere good. It’s a slippery slope, folks. We’ve got to be careful, or next thing you know we’ll be in red capes and white hats remembering the good old days when women were allowed to read.
likingthistoomuch: Last question: If you could change just one thing about BBC’s version of Sherlock, what would it be?
OhAine: Oh dear. Just one??? Okay, let me discount a few contenders first:
I would ask that there be more Molly. Lots more Molly. That the kiss had been real. That Sherlock be naked at all times. That the shirts were tighter and the curls longer. That Mary had lived. That Holmes got the Watson he deserved. That Moriarty had lived. That Eurus hadn’t. That Paul McGuigan had stuck around. Ditto Stephen Thompson. That they had kept production values at primetime and not Saturday tea-time CBBC levels. That the production staff hadn’t stirred the shit just because they liked the attention. That Mofftiss had had a beta, or at least someone who challenged their ideas…
But if I could choose just one thing, one thing that would be possible for them to do and not go off at a tangent, then I would have them stick to the cases. Tell the story they were telling at the start: The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, as told by his Boswell. I’ll be forever sad that they chose not to do that.
Next week, Friday 10th of May, part two of this interview turns the tables and @ohaine interviews @likingthistoomuch.
Tissues at the ready, because, sniff sniff, this is the last post in the current series. And we’re ending with me, @ohaine, putting questions to one of my favourite people in the whole world, @likingthistoomuch, who answers questions about her secret squish, how culture and language influence her writing, and why her eyeball occasionally rolls under the bed.
If you’ve been in the Sherlolly corner of the fandom for any length of time at all you’ll already know that likingthistoomuch is funny, sweet and not afraid to say what she thinks. What you may not know is that she’s one of the kindest, wisest people that you’ll ever meet. She’s a beautiful person, a wonderful friend, a bit crazy, a bit sarcastic, and now, by public vote (well, I voted for it), an honorary Irish cailín dána. As if all of those things weren’t enough she’s a damn fine writer too. Want me to prove it?
Molly looked surprised but followed his lead. They moved to the silent tune being played in his head, upping their tempo as the notes seemed to flow fast and with certainty until they reached a crescendo and slowly seemed to fall as leaves in autumn, leaving a wonderful silence in their wake.
“There’s no silence when I’m around you. It’s music. And its beautiful.”
The simplest symphony, one of her sixty two stories, is one of my all time favourites, and I was so happy to get the chance over Christmas 2018 to pick her brain about where these beautiful words come from.
OhAine: I’m always impressed by the gentle way you treat your words, and I’ve often wondered is that because English is a second language for you?
Likingthistoomuch: I am always surprised when reviewers say that because I honestly just blurt it all out. There is no deliberate attempt to make the words the way they are. And English, though it may seem like my second language, is in a way my first because my entire education has been in English. (I just may be more fluent in it than the local languages but that’s a discussion between my mum and me that you really don’t want to know.) The only real barriers are when it comes to the British way of putting words. Because we are so exposed to American TV, that’s the language that forms immediately in my mind. But it’s getting better, because nowadays it’s all British TV for me! (GoT is worldwide and based in Westeros so it’s not American ok!)
OhAine: Brit-picking you mean? Nothing will throw me out of a Sherlock story faster than reading something that just shouldn’t be there, so how do you get around it?
Likingthistoomuch: I (le gasp!!) ask people like you and Emma Lynch but mostly I just bulldoze ahead. (My muse lasts less than the winter here so I need to move it quickly.)
OhAine: And is it that love of film/TV/stories that inspired you to write in the first place, or are you a life-long writer? What was the very first moment that you thought to yourself; I can do that?
Likingthistoomuch: I would call myself the Accidental Writer (I can almost hear the play-writes scribbling that title down...royalties people!!!). I wanted to read a story with a certain story line, and the then regular prompt takers were all busy. @writingwife-83 was the one who suggested that I try writing the fic on my own, she said, “Why don’t you just give it a go!” And I did. The result, Moving with time, didn’t seem to be too bad considering. Of course I get the cringe moment when I read it now, but that’s what started the ball rolling!
OhAine: This seems like a really apt moment to slip in a reader question submitted by @writingwife-83. She asked; How does writing inspiration tend to strike for you? Does it hit you out of the blue or does it come from something more external?
Likingthistoomuch: It’s literally a hit from out of the blue! It can be a movie or a song or recollection of a scene, literally anything. That is exactly why my post-TFP took so long to finish, the story (Our love has a way about it) was just not getting through!! So I look at admiration when writers take on a prompt and expand it into stories. My mind’s inbox is full of Asks, waiting for the brain to acknowledge and work on it :).
OhAine: When I looked at your sixty two stories as a body, it occurred to me that there are two types of stories that you excel at; Victorian!lock, and short scenes—
Likingthistoomuch: Ooh thank you.
OhAine: No, genuinely, no smoke blowing here LOL. I think you have a real affinity for Victorian Sherlock. So, how do you get into the mind set and what about that era particularly inspires you?
Likingthistoomuch: The mind-set isn’t much of an imaginative journey. We Indians have a saying, "The English left India but left their bastard behind." This refers to the narrow minded, sexist mind-set that was highly followed during Victorian times, remnants of which we are still fighting to get rid of here. Not blaming it all on the English, we have been pretty inventive with our own original regressive thought process too. So for the social mind-set and fic setting, all I need is to look out the window.
I love putting Molly and Sherlock in that era because on some front, both of them epitomise "not all heroes wear capes". She is trying to reach for opportunities that are denied to her just because of her gender and he is seen as the almost vulgar, rude and insensitive soul who is ready to judge people on their merits alone...(oh how dare he!!) It’s a personal favourite to put them in an era where they do struggle and fight but eventually it always work towards what they want, and of course, they get it via some unrelenting angst but hey what’s the fun if it’s all bubble gum. (It’s almost my inner romantic peeping out but don’t you dare tell anyone about it, I have a reputation to keep!)
OhAine: I can kind of relate to that – and this is something I put to @hobbitsdoitbetter too, because she writes Victorian era Sherlolly so brilliantly as well – I often think of Molly in the Victorian works as being like Irish women of the last generation who took their small victories where they found them.
Likingthistoomuch: True, unfortunately every geography and people has a similar story to tell. Things are changing but this change has yet to reach the grassroots levels.
OhAine: We can’t talk about your Victorian!lock without mentioning With eyes shut tight, where you did a very interesting thing when you switched to John’s voice in a very ACD way. What inspired that? How did you find John’s voice?
Likingthistoomuch: I actually found John's character (and Martin's fabulous portrayal) in TAB to be very interesting. Here is a man who can see what’s correct, will support it but is also so short sighted that he doesn’t realise that in supporting the women's struggle elsewhere he is ignoring the struggle going on in his own home. So there was the empathy for Molly not getting her due treatment as Sherlock's wife balanced by the outrage at her wanting to follow her own heart. Martin's performance in TAB is my favourite of the special and it was fun to try and bring in his voice, the sarcasm battling the disbelief. I had great fun doing it :)
OhAine: I have this theory that you have a secret squish on John, am I right?
Likingthistoomuch: You mean crush? I absolutely adore the boots off Martin Freeman, his performance is exquisite. I know we all look in awe at Ben's work, but for me, performance wise Martin takes the cake.
As for John...you know Sherlock puts on a veil of indifference to hide that he feels so much. I think for John it’s the opposite. He thinks he feels a lot and understands it all, but he too is hiding the inner struggling man. That’s why the TLD exchange between these two, (S: Underneath all we may just be human. J:You too? S: No, you too) is so profound. Just as Sherlock found in John a partner, John did too. It’s just that Sherlock accepts that he needs John, John is too blind to understand that he needs Sherlock too. That is one man who has his emotions so cross wired and tangled, it’s a very interesting character. And the thing is I feel Sherlock understands that and hangs on to John, not looking at it as a weakness. John, if he ever introspects, will find his dependency on Sherlock as a weakness. It’s basically asking Sherlock to do something, which he himself would not apply.
And Martin adds a different layer each time he plays him.
OhAine: One of my favourites of yours is a short story (<1,000 words), New paths. There’s a very calm, meditative feeling to the story: could you tell me a bit about your inspiration?
Likingthistoomuch: So, couple of years back we made a trip to England, and had visited Filey, near Scarborough in Yorkshire. After a long drive from London, we arrived and realised that there was a view of this cliff face from our cottage. And while my city bred, urban self gawked at the lovely site, the cloud thing happened and the hills actually turned pink. In that moment, it went all quiet and I literally felt the tiredness from my long journey seep away. And it’s only nature that can do that magic.
While writing New Paths, I wanted to see things from Molly's perspective. Do I feel she broke down and cried buckets and ate two tubs of ice cream? Maybe, but I don’t think so. I think she just felt tired and also at the same time, like a huge weight was off her back. And sometimes, what you need for your soul to just feel even a little better is a few moments away from humanity. Not necessarily to forget things, but more like to recharge your batteries and get the energy to deal with things in a better way. So I made her experience what I did that evening. I made her experience the sea, the beautiful colours that nature shows and just heal her tired heart a little. God knows she needed it.
OhAine: Misty silhouettes is a unique story, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen one quite like it before. Can you tell me about how it came to you and what are the challenges of writing Sherlock and Molly through so many lives?
Likingthistoomuch: Misty came about because of Mirrors, a short one I wrote on my phone, half asleep and trying to get rid of an ear (brain?) worm. Kiki had loved it and encouraged me to expand on it, which I attempted to do. I think I had just recently watched a historic Indian movie and was highly impressed with the battle scene, hence the opening sequence. I thought; why not work through time as well as geography, bringing these two closer and closer, like they showed in the short Sherlock episode before S3, where Anderson comments Sherlock is coming home? So they start in ancient India, and then slowly weave geographically as well as chronologically towards their current destination, London.
The challenges were to keep the story along the same theme as Mirrors, so trying to find characters, stories and their ending as well as the transition into the next life was some work. In short, I feel I have exhausted my small quota of creative imagination where the story stands right now, on the cusp of the last chapter where Sherlock is now in current time. It is definitely NOT abandoned; I have at least formulated ten stories and discarded them all because after such a long journey, Molly and Sherlock deserve a good reunion. And I trust myself to write it one day. Because that right end WILL come, I am sure of it.
OhAine: Have you found that end yet?
Likingthistoomuch: I may have! I have just started on that path, praying I stay on it.
OhAine: What does your proofreading and editing process look like?
Likingthistoomuch: Going through the document three times, checking for typos. Posting the fic, finding those three escaped typos and correcting them. Finding typos the more times I read a story. Yes, that’s the process. Elegant, no?
OhAine: Super elegant, LOL!!! You would rather do it yourself than press a beta into service? Or do you find working with someone else restrictive?
Likingthistoomuch: I think it may just be because I am such an impatient writer. I have loads and loads of ideas but putting them on paper takes a lot out of me. So once it’s there, I can’t wait to get it published and for you guys to see (and maybe get a few reviews too.)
I am learning. I do at times ask for help to oversee the plot and the work and it’s worth waiting.
OhAine: But you work without a beta most of the time… Is that a deliberate choice, or something that’s just evolved?
Likingthistoomuch: Actually, that’s just how it evolved. My first impression of a beta was someone who would do a read through and call out my typos and grammatical mistakes. Then it dawned that I could ask about the story line and if / how/ will it work. The advantage of working with someone is that you might get a better way of putting your story forward, get help when you are stuck. Or they’ll help you understand character’s motives and inspirations even more, which was a fantastic new experience for me. On the downside you could end up telling someone else's story.
OhAine: I think that’s a great point; you can end up telling someone else’s story, and it sort of has me reflecting that I’ve done that when I was very new to writing. Has it ever happened – even in relation to reader input – to you?
Likingthistoomuch: Actually no. But that’s also because almost 95% of my fics are one-shots. As for inspiring something new, only Kiki's advice at expanding Mirrors was an exception. The rest...? I am a free bird!!
OhAine: I’ve seen it argued lately that sites like tumblr stifle creativity and can lead your writing in directions you wouldn’t have otherwise taken it. What’s your take on that?
Likingthistoomuch: Oh good question! The social policing at times can inhibit your writing and introduce undue caution at best or a total change of direction of the story at worse. It’s something that every writer has to take a call on, and finally write a story that he or she wants to tell. Because, at least for me, I know when I have written something good, and maybe not many would like it. But it’s the story I want to tell, and if I am not able to do that, no matter how many accolades I get, there would always be a feeling of dissatisfaction bubbling beneath the surface. I may just not share my work next time, and that would even further piss me off :D So not a good cycle to get into. I would encourage writers to take pride in their creation and own it like a boss. Your words indeed are your baby!
OhAine: Does that mean that social media has been a stimulator more than a damper of creativity for you?
Likingthistoomuch: So far I have had a relationship with social media where I have been able to distance myself if there indeed is shit happening. Which, if you have been on tumblr long enough, you know is pretty frequent. I keep to my lane, and I expect you to do the same. So far it has been a stimulator, and the few moments where it could’ve been a dampener, I was able to remind myself that’s it’s all virtual and imaginary and I have a real life outside, and hence was able to ignore the shit.
I have a very simple mantra, you no like, you unfollow or block or ignore. I will survive, indeed thrive, in your absence....if I notice your absence in the first place.
OhAine: The thing that puts me off social media is the combative purity culture that seems to be so prevalent now.
Likingthistoomuch: *roll my eyes so hard am still looking for my right eyeball that rolled under the bed, the bugger* All I can say is, real life is tough as nails, Social Media should be a platform to release some steam, not to order or bully people around. Again, instead of telling people what to do, what to post it would be better if the Social Police (aka Staff) got their act together and BLOODY ADDRESSED THE PORN BOTS. (I got 5 new followers yesterday and no prizes for guess what they are.)
Also, as a blogger, it’s not MY responsibility to ensure that YOUR children and young people see clean content. There are tags and blocks meant for filtering NSFW stuff. I came to your free site because I thought I could post/follow the stuff I want. And people will always find a way to find 'blocked' content. It’s called Google.
OhAine: And a few quick fire questions to wrap it up. Starting with: how do you find your titles?
Likingthistoomuch: Like literally throwing a net out there and hoping the words caught make sense. Sometimes it’s just *snap* and you have your title, sometimes it takes time. I always hope the story inspires the heading but that rarely happens. Except for my post TFP, Our love has a way about it. That was purely the after effect of finishing chapter 1 that I had been trying for months.
OhAine: How do you gauge the success of a story? What’s the metric you live by?
Likingthistoomuch: Reviews! Comments! God, I love them. But honestly, sometimes it’s more about being happy myself and putting an honest effort on the paper. I feel the best when I know the job I have done is a good, genuine one, like for Our love has a way about it. It’s a lovely feeling and very few things can replace that knowledge of a job well done.
OhAine: Do you find writing is an outlet for real life pressure?
Likingthistoomuch: Not really. How can I say this, it adds a bit of colour? Like people who art! Writing makes me feel good, that I can do things that may not have a tangible benefit for anyone but it is a big achievement for me. And since not many know that I write, it’s a very personal feeling, a fight to the finish with myself.
I had a great time addressing all these questions, Áine. I am surprised that the answers aren’t one worded, as I half expected them to be. Caught me in a chatty moment I should say :) This has been a wonderful exercise, and dare I say, a wonderful initiative. Kudos to you for coming up with this.
OhAine: Aww, thanks Gee, you’re such a sweetie :) It’s been great fun, but I’ll be glad to get Friday afternoons back to normal!!
So guys, that’s it for now. I just want to say a massive thank you to everyone who read, followed, re-blogged, liked, left comments, and supported this project, none of which would have been possible without the oh-so many lovely writers and interviewers who gave up their their time to participate, and who so kindly shared their fandom and writing experiences.
Thank you all so, so much ♥
Welcome back everyone for this our ninth interview in the series. This week @thisisartbylexie turns the tables on her interviewer, friend and collaborator @writingwife-83 posing questions about her writing and how it all began.
Below you’ll find a soundcloud link to the interview (no account needed to access!) and below the cut there are links to the various things they discuss.
thisisartbylexie interviews writingwife83
Aunt Didi: AO3 | tumblr
Winds of Change
I Told You So
Benefits of Boredom
Zephyr: Fic | Audio fic
Half Agony, Half Hope
High Functioning A.I.
Anjalikestodraw
We’re taking a one week break from posting, but will be back on Friday, April 26th 2019 when @theleftpill chats to @kstewmanipulation
Here we are again folks, number 8! This time we’re continuing on from last week’s interview with a bit of role reversal, @ellis-hendricks posing questions to her friend and beta @geekmama, chatting about Brit-picking, bad writing habits, favourite authors, and, most importantly, which of Sherlock’s shirts does it for her.
But starting off with a recap of last week’s intro...
We are, respectively, a Californian and a Geordie, and we got to know each other through reading and reviewing each other’s fics (geekmama’s ‘Time of the Season’ series was one of the first fics I read and loved). Geekmama has been writing in the fandom for around 3 years, and I’ve been doing the same for around 2 years, spurred on by the end of series 4 (and the ILY scene in particular). We started beta-reading each other’s work around a year ago, and are always discovering new and unexpected words and phrases that don’t translate across the pond! Although we’ve used the same set of questions for these interviews, we haven’t seen each other’s answers – so it does mean that if nobody else is interested, at least we will be!
Series
ellis-hendricks: Was there a particular moment in the series that set the ship sailing for you?
geekmama: I think it was A Scandal in Belgravia, and specifically Sherlock’s unprecedented apology to Molly, that got me thinking that the possibility was there, that it wasn’t just Molly’s schoolgirl crush vs. Sherlock’s needs when the game was on. I have to say, even though the Sherlock/Molly ship is easy to board, Mofftiss, etc., were very clever about leaving the way open for other pairings throughout the series. Even the ILY scene and its fallout could be interpreted very differently, if one was so inclined. It is really thanks to all the amazing fanfic authors out there that I jumped on board and took up residence on the good ship Sherlolly.
ellis-hendricks: What's your favourite episode and why?
geekmama: I love bits and pieces of all of them, but the one that I’ve watched more than any other is The Sign of Three. It’s heartwarming, hilarious, and only mildly heartbreaking. Even the villain of the piece, as little as we see him, has a motive one can understand.
ellis-hendricks: If you could ask/tell the series writers one thing, what would it be?
geekmama: Killing off Mary was a mistake, and I don’t care if that event sets up the entire story arc of season four, you should have thought of something else. Come on! You are brilliant writers, you could have done it.
ellis-hendricks: Do you have a controversial opinion about the series? E.g. a character who everyone else hates, but who you love?
geekmama: Or everyone loves but you hate? I’d say Moriarty qualifies. Andrew Scott is very cute, but though he’s in a number of the episodes we’re never given much insight to his character’s motives. Moriarty is pretty much just murderously insane in canon, and I don’t understand how one gets around that to write Molly/Moriarty or any of the slash pairings.
ellis-hendricks: Have you ever, when watching an episode, cracked a case before Sherlock?
geekmama: Well, if the writers want us to, then we’re given the information to crack the case before Sherlock. The series is about him, after all. The cases are secondary.
ellis-hendricks: With whom would you rather be stuck at a wedding table –
Janine or Irene?
geekmama: Janine, she is just fun and rather ordinary, whereas Irene has numerous ulterior motives under her veneer of smug vanity.
ellis-hendricks: Donovan or Anderson?
geekmama: Anderson, since he actually felt remorse for what they did to Sherlock, and came to admire him, too. There might be more to Donovan than what we’re given, and certainly that’s what fanfic is for -- I’ve made her a sympathetic character in a couple of my own fics. And apparently she and Sherlock have some pretty interesting history between them.
ellis-hendricks: Who would you rather bring back in series 5 - Mary or Moriarty?
geekmama: Mary, of course -- she is a far more well-rounded (and loveable) character. One wants to know more about her.
ellis-hendricks: Whose house would you prefer to live in - Sherlock's, John & Mary's, Molly's or Mrs Hudson's?
geekmama: Probably Molly’s, though Sherlock’s would be tempting. Molly’s looks pretty state-of-the-art in the ILY scene, if rather bland -- I couldn’t imagine Molly living in a place that’s all granite gray. It doesn’t reflect her personality at all, and I didn’t even think it could be her home the first time I saw that episode.
ellis-hendricks: In your opinion, who has been the best series villain - Jim Moriarty, Charles Magnussen, Culverton Smith, or Eurus Holmes?
geekmama: Eurus. We’re at least given some idea of her motives, and one can feel some sympathy for her, even though she is as insanely murderous as the other three. The other three are pretty equally revolting.
Your writing
ellis-hendricks: What was your first fic? What prompted it, and how do you feel about it now?
geekmama: My first in the Sherlock fandom was Visiting Hours, written in March 2016. I first watched seasons 1-3 of Sherlock in October 2015 and I’d been reading other authors’ work for several months. There were ideas I wanted to explore, and I wanted to see if I could still write at all, lol! I hadn’t written anything since July of 2013, when I celebrated a decade of being in the Pirates of the Caribbean fandom with a series of ten 50 word drabbles. Visiting Hours is only 100 words, official drabble length, and it’s held up pretty well, I think. I don’t hate it, at least.
ellis-hendricks: Which fic are you most proud of/most attached to, and why?
geekmama: This is a really difficult question since I’ve written quite a few Sherlock fics. If I had to narrow it down, maybe Idiots in Love, which is part of the Aftermath series and from Greg Lestrade’s pov, which is always fun, and The Kensington House, kid!fic from my Time of the Season series. But then there are all the holiday fics… and the historical AU’s…
ellis-hendricks: You write great AUs set in other historical periods - do you prefer this or present day?
geekmama: I’ve read, and written, a lot of historical fiction, and certainly writing it comes much more easily to me than writing something set in the present day -- particularly current culture in the UK. It’s a good thing my dear Ellis_Hendricks is willing to Brit-pick for me. I did my best, but I’m sure my early Sherlock fic has plenty of errors in that regard. That was the most difficult thing for me when I was beginning to write in this fandom. However, I have grown to enjoy writing fic set in the present almost as much as writing historical fic.
ellis-hendricks: What are your worst writing habits?/What are your most overused phrases, plotlines, etc?
geekmama: Wow. There are probably a LOT of bad habits (run-on sentences, excessive use of parentheses and ellipses, etc. etc.etc.), and overused phrases/words. As for plotlines, I find the (comparatively) reality-based canon of Sherlock to be somewhat limiting to begin with (which is why AU’s were invented, I suppose). I try not to repeat plotlines, but of course I’ve used post-ILY scenarios multiple times (and no doubt will again -- the anniversary is coming up on the 15th), and I tend to overdo the h/c as that’s one of my favorite things.
ellis-hendricks: Do you have a writing routine? Where and when? And is everything digital, or are things ever handwritten first?
geekmama: Laptop, ideally in the morning, alone in bed (except for a pile of snoozing dogs), with no distractions like music etc. I can write with the TV or music on, but it takes a lot longer to produce anything. I haven’t produced finished handwritten works since I was in high school, and when I first got back into writing in late 2003 it was on a laptop I borrowed from work -- and it was a revelation! I wouldn’t bother handwriting more than a drabble or the outline of a story, now. Computers FTW!!!
ellis-hendricks: Who do you enjoy writing the most?
geekmama: Sherlock (if I have to choose -- I love Molly, Mycroft, and Lestrade pov, too).
ellis-hendricks: Who do you find easiest/hardest doing first person POV? - Sherlock seems fairly easy a lot of the time (hopefully readers agree -- I may be way off base, who knows?), and maybe Molly for hardest. We see so little of Molly over the course of the series it’s sometimes difficult for me to get a handle on her.
ellis-hendricks: Which fic would you recommend to someone who has never read your stuff before? - Benefit of the Doubt, maybe. I like the way it came out. It was one of those that practically wrote itself.
ellis-hendricks: What do you value most when it comes to feedback?
geekmama: Any feedback is very much appreciated, from Kudos to brief comments, but it’s always nice when someone references a particular phrase or idea they liked. I know how difficult that is to do, sometimes, though.
ellis-hendricks: Would you ever go back and revise old fics - or do you consign them to history once they're published?
geekmama: If I discover (or someone points out) an error I will go back and correct it, but I don’t really revise my stories once they are posted.
ellis-hendricks: What's the nicest/weirdest bit of feedback you've ever had? And does feedback ever influence what you write next, either within a story or in terms of future fics?
geekmama: I have to say I’ve had a lot of great, encouraging comments over the years, and maybe a few negative ones, mostly on FF.net, which I pretty much ignore, though one or two brought up interesting points. I think mostly people leave a comment if they really like something, or just go away if they don’t. Feedback does influence what I write to an extent -- say if someone really wants more of a certain story, or aspect of a story, that gets me thinking how it could be done.
ellis-hendricks: Do you - or would you - write other pairings?
geekmama: Well, yes, I’ve written Mycroft/Lady Smallwood, and John/Mary, and I have a few fics that reference Lestrade/OFC. And of course there are other F/M possibilities. But mostly it’s Sherlock/Molly.
ellis-hendricks: How would you define your style? (E.g. mine was called 'fluffy realism’, which I quite liked!)
geekmama: I agree with that ‘fluffy realism’ definition, the sweetest stuff and easily related to. I would call mine “Romance” if I had to choose a word, the old definition of romance that entails fluff, angst, humor, adventure -- all the stuff that makes a story interesting and fun to read.
ellis-hendricks: What's your method in approaching a story? Do you plan methodically, or wing it?
geekmama: I am somewhere in between. With longer fic I sometimes use an outline, but more often I have a basic plot in mind, complete with ending, and think about it until I’m finally ready (and have the time) to write it.
ellis-hendricks: Who do you write for? Is it you, or are you thinking about trying to please your audience?
geekmama: Mostly me. I started writing fanfic in the Pirates of the Caribbean fandom because I wasn’t seeing fic that went where I wanted to go with that story. With Sherlock it was some of that, and the fact that I wanted to further explore these compelling characters, and writing fic was the best way to do that. But I do write for my audience, to an extent, and it is fun to accept a prompt or theme from someone and write to it. In the PotC fandom we had a weekly drabble challenge for years, and I really miss that sort of thing.
ellis-hendricks: Do you have any WIPs, and do you think new chapters will ever see the light of day?
geekmama: I do have a WIP, Souvenirs, for which I’ve written a couple of additional chapters, and hope to finish some day. But it sort of got waylaid by the whole post-ILY thing. I may finish it. You never know. I also hope to write some more of that Regency AU, Uncertain Terms.
ellis-hendricks: Are you working on anything at the moment?
geekmama: I’m going to try to write something for the ILY Anniversay (January 15th).
ellis-hendricks: What’s harder for you - writing the start of a fic, or coming up with a decent title?
geekmama: Writing the start, I guess. Titles are usually easy. It’s plot and particularly a good ending that take a lot of work.
Reading other people's fics
ellis-hendricks: What are your favourite tropes in the fandom?
geekmama: Post-ILY scenarios, for sure, h/c, kid!fic, Mary is still alive, Christmas stories. Etc.
ellis-hendricks: What things are likely to turn you off a fic?
geekmama: Bad characterizations (we read fanfic because we want more of the characters we love); poor editing / grammar; too many crazy tags; Intro posts that have TMI (I don’t want to know that you’re bad at titles/summaries/etc.), or that solicit reviews too blatantly. Well, those things and just stuff I don’t want to read -- bad porn, excessive violence (torture in particular), stories focusing on characters I dislike. I’m kind of picky, actually. But we write and read in a particular fandom for personal pleasure, and I think authors have to expect that their work won’t please everybody (or maybe anybody - who knows?).
ellis-hendricks: Can you recommend 3 favourite fics that aren't your own?
geekmama: Only 3??? Well, I’ve printed out miabicicletta’s A fearful hope was all the world, and sunken_standard’s Fumbling Toward Ecstasy, so I guess that counts for something. It’s virtually impossible to choose one of Ellis_Hendricks’ fic, they reference so many of my favorite tropes and are all of them deliciously memorable. But then, how can I leave out Quarto’s Competition? Or Emma_Lynch’s Quarantine? Or so many others?
ellis-hendricks: What compels you to leave comments on top of kudos?
geekmama: If some idea or turn of phrase stands out for me, and if the fic is well-done in general.
ellis-hendricks: Quick-fire questions!
John's TEH moustache or his TAB moustache?
geekmama: TAB (I don’t think we are meant to like his TEH moustache, are we?).
Sherlock's purple shirt or white shirt?
geekmama: Gah! Why do I have to choose? Purple, then.
Molly's stripy jumper or cherry cardigan?
geekmama: Stripy jumper, I think, as their relationship is more fully developed at that point.
Mary's christening outfit or black-ops gear?
geekmama: Christening outfit, for sure.
Submitted by OhAine: this is a joint question for Ellis and geekmama: Do you feel that working together as betas has changed the way you both write?
geekmama: Not really, my process is the same and any input from Ellis_Hendricks is given after the fact. I edit the story accordingly, but there are usually only minor changes involved. I am particularly grateful for her “Brit-picking” skill, which obviously makes her far more valuable to me than I am to her -- it’s surprising how many little differences there are between the UK’s culture and California’s. I was woefully ignorant about that when I became involved in this fandom, and I don’t feel I’m much better now, really.
Next week, Friday 12th April 2019, @thisisartbylexie interviews @writingwife-83
Welcome to interview number 7! Guys, this is a two-parter with fandom friends @ellis-hendricks and @geekmama posing a similar set of questions to each other. Ellis won the coin toss, so she’s up first -- discussing why her husband is to blame for her Sherlock obsession, fluffy realism, and why John reminds her of a sad walrus -- with geekmama’s turn coming next week.
Ellis_Hendricks (interviewed by geekmama)
We are, respectively, a Californian and a Geordie, and we got to know each other through reading and reviewing each other’s fics (geekmama’s ‘Time of the Season’ series was one of the first fics I read and loved). Geekmama has been writing in the fandom for around 3 years, and I’ve been doing the same for around 2 years, spurred on by the end of series 4 (and the ILY scene in particular). We started beta-reading each other’s work around a year ago, and are always discovering new and unexpected words and phrases that don’t translate across the pond! Although we’ve used the same set of questions for these interviews, we haven’t seen each other’s answers – so it does mean that if nobody else is interested, at least we will be!
Questions about the series
geekmama: Was there a particular moment in the series that set the ship sailing for you?
Ellis_Hendricks: It happened as soon as I started paying attention properly! I missed series 1 when the BBC first showed it, and when it was repeated, it was my husband who wanted to watch, and I was just casually joining in. But I think it was probably ASiB that did it for me - the contrast between Irene and Molly, and the manner in which Molly stood up for herself.
geekmama: What's your favourite episode and why?
Ellis_Hendricks: I know it’s considered by some to be the least ‘Sherlock’ of Sherlock episodes, but it’s got to be The Sign of Three. The Best Man speech alone is an amazing piece of writing and performance, but then you’ve got the Worst Stag Night in History (™), Sherlock’s Mind Palace interactions with the women caught up with the Mayfly Man, and of course, Molly stabbing her fiancé with a fork! But it also reveals some of Sherlock’s secrets (his love of dancing) and vulnerabilities (his loneliness), and they’re so deftly woven into the action and the comedy. From a Sherlolly point of view, the ‘planning the stag do’ scene is always going to be a classic (I particularly love how Molly has the upper hand here), and then there’s the look on Molly’s face during Sherlock’s speech that so clearly shows that she only has eyes for the Best Man.
geekmama: If you could ask/tell the series writers one thing, what would it be?
Ellis_Hendricks: Very hard to pick one thing, as there are so many moments when you really want to interrogate the writers’ intentions, particularly when they (deliberately, infuriatingly) leave things vague! I have always wanted to know, though, how Janine came to be Mary’s chief bridesmaid - was Janine a pawn used by Magnussen to befriend Mary and gain her trust, was she in on it in some way (seems unlikely), or were she and Mary genuinely just friends and the connection was just a massive coincidence?!
Oh, and at what point did Sherlock realise that Molly was engaged? The way the camera zooms into her engagement ring implies that this was the moment he noticed (and his previous behaviour would largely support that) - but it’s hard to believe that Sherlock would miss a detail like that.
geekmama: Do you have a controversial opinion about the series? E.g. a character who everyone else hates, but who you love?
Ellis_Hendricks: I’m not keen on Irene, although that’s probably not a controversial opinion. But it’s not particularly for shipper reasons - I just don’t like what the writers did with the character, which, to me, was quite tired and hackneyed. I do have a soft spot for poor Tom, though - and actually, I don’t think his ‘meat dagger’ idea was that idiotic! In other circumstances, if Sherlock had come up with that, it would have been hailed as genius!
geekmama: Have you ever, when watching an episode, cracked a case before Sherlock?
Ellis_Hendricks: Ha! No. Although I did notice right away that the same actress (Sian Brooke) was playing multiple roles in TLD - not that I worked out why, though!
geekmama: With whom would you rather be stuck at a wedding table - Janine or Irene? Donovan or Anderson?
Ellis_Hendricks: I would be massively intimidated by all three women, for different reasons, and Anderson would obviously be intolerable. It’s probably got to be Donovan - she’d have some good police stories, at least, and she probably wouldn’t try to make me dance.
geekmama: Who would you rather bring back in series 5 - Mary or Moriarty?
Ellis_Hendricks: I really like Mary, but I would throw something at the TV if it turned out she’d faked her own death somehow. I was sad she was killed off, but once it’s done, I think it has to be final. Moriarty has probably had his day now, too, especially in the light of the revelations about Eurus - although his suicide was a brilliant shock, I do wonder whether Moftiss killed him off too soon.
geekmama: Whose house would you prefer to live in - Sherlock's, John & Mary's, Molly's or Mrs Hudson's?
Ellis_Hendricks: If the rest of Molly’s flat/house is as nice as her kitchen, then Molly’s (although the kitchen wasn’t at all what I would have imagined for her). Although it has some nice quirks, I would generally see 221B as a horrible regression to student filth.
geekmama: In your opinion, who has been the best series villain - Jim Moriarty, Charles Magnussen, Culverton Smith, or Eurus Holmes?
Ellis_Hendricks: I think it has to be Jim, if only because he was the most fun. Magnussen and Smith were clearly despicable human beings in their own way, and they were both incredibly chilling. Although Eurus is a fascinating prospect, as a character in this particular show (and with the history she was given), I found her harder to buy into - it was all a bit too Silence of the Lambs.
Questions about your writing
geekmama: What was your first fic? What prompted it, and how do you feel about it now?
Ellis_Hendricks: It was ‘Completely Backwards’ - aka, Sherlock hatches a plot to get Molly pregnant, because he somehow thinks it will make her happy. It ended up being part of a much longer series, although I didn’t plan it that way. In fact, I wrote it more or less freeform, and it wasn’t beta-read, so I guess it’s a bit rough around the edges - looking back, there are a few small plot points I would change (mostly due to my relative lack of grounding in the series at the time), but it more or less stands up. Two years later, people are still reading and liking it, so it must work okay!
geekmama: Which fic are you most proud of/most attached to, and why?
Ellis_Hendricks: I’m genuinely quite proud of all of them, but I’m really pleased with the way both ‘In Loco Parentis’ (which follows Sherlock and Molly through 18 years of godparenting) and ‘A Knockout Christmas’ (Sherlock does A Christmas Carol) turned out. Both were quite big challenges. ‘In Loco Parentis’ involved thinking about how Sherlock and Molly would develop as a long-term married couple, how everyone’s lives might change and move on, and also both creating and sustaining original characters (in the form of their kids - and to an extent Rosie, who is not mine, but who we only know as a baby, and therefore have to take a guess at!). ‘A Knockout Christmas’ was an idea that came to me in a moment of insanity, and which I wrote fairly quickly - but I felt as though it had to strike a balance of being true to the series, and close enough to A Christmas Carol so that it followed similar beats and themes. Oh, and getting the choice of Sherlock’s ‘ghosts’ right was vital as well!
geekmama: In what ways does that old rule, “Write what you know” affect your writing?
Ellis_Hendricks: Quite a bit, I think. Or if I want to write about something that I don’t know, I do sufficient research so I can at least bluff that I know about it! My background is totally arts-based, so I feel very out of my depth when writing about anything sciencey (Chemistry was my worst subject in high school - I felt like doing a victory parade when I passed that exam!). I’m also not well-versed in fantasy or sci-fi literature, so I would also feel a bit of a fraud attempting something in an AU along those lines. Most of my fics are straightforward family/relationship pieces, and I suppose that’s my comfort zone. Generally speaking, my life is far too uneventful to actually inform plotlines - although Molly’s medical emergency in ‘Under One Roof’ was based on the birth of my younger child (and writing it served as cheap therapy!)
geekmama: What are your worst writing habits? What are your most overused phrases, plotlines, etc.?
Ellis_Hendricks: I’m not so hot on writing beautiful, detailed description, so I feel it’s something that’s lacking a bit in some of my fics - and it’s kind of out of laziness, and an impatience to get to the bits I do like! I think that I’m a bit repetitive when it comes to describing people’s gestures/facial expressions/reactions, and I’m also guilty of burdening characters with the same old verbal tics and quirks. In terms of plotlines, you could probably argue that all of my fics are basically the same story written from a slightly different angle!
geekmama: Do you have a writing routine? Where and when? And is everything digital, or are things ever handwritten first?
Ellis_Hendricks: Oh, for a writing routine! When I come up with an idea, it’s a case of frantically jotting down notes (usually on my PC or phone, but occasionally on paper if that’s more convenient at the time) - I then try to work those notes into a story plan in bullet points, usually including bits of dialogue if it occurs while I’m thinking. I generally have to write in short bursts, as and when I have time - at my desk during my lunch hour, on my phone while commuting (by train, I hasten to add - not while driving), at home once the small people have gone to bed. But if I had more time, I know I’d only procrastinate!
geekmama: Who do you enjoy writing the most?
Ellis_Hendricks: I’d love to give a more interesting answer, but it’s probably Sherlock - although writing his parents is also a lot of fun.
geekmama: Who do you find easiest/hardest doing first person POV?
Ellis_Hendricks: I think I’ve written from Sherlock’s, Molly’s, John’s, Mary’s and Mycroft’s POV, and to be honest, I’ve loved doing all of them, because each presents a different writing challenge. Mary was possibly the hardest, because she’s such a closed book in a way, and so much is unknown - and because I want to be sympathetic to her, at the same time as finding some of her choices questionable! Writing ‘A Dead Man in the Family’ really got me into writing Mycroft - to the point that I actually started to feel an affinity with him, which was a bit disconcerting!
geekmama: Which fic would you recommend to someone who has never read your stuff before?
Ellis_Hendricks: Hmm, if someone wanted a quick taster, maybe ‘The Wedding Planner’ or a recent one, ‘A Piece of That’. Most of my fics are multi-chapter, so if you’re willing to get your teeth into something longer (so to speak - that sounds wrong!), you could try ‘Not What it Looks Like’ (only 3 chapters), or start with ‘Completely Backwards’ and then see whether you want to keep reading that series for the next five months!
geekmama: What do you value most when it comes to feedback?
Ellis_Hendricks: All feedback is wonderful (except for the time a 12-year-old tried to start an ALL CAPS fight with me about Eurus!). For me, the greatest compliment is when people say that the characters feel authentic, and/or a story feels like a missing scene from the series. Anytime that someone says a story made them laugh, cry, or otherwise have a spontaneous outburst of emotion, that’s amazing, too. But having that dialogue with readers is what is important - the feeling that you’re not just throwing out stories into the void, and the encouragement that keeps you writing.
geekmama: Would you ever go back and revise old fics - or do you consign them to history once they're published?
Ellis_Hendricks: No, I’m pretty much of the feeling that what’s done is done. The only changes I’ve made are spelling/grammatical ones that I’ve spotted later on - or when I’ve spotted a glaring error that might throw people out of a story. I don’t think I’d ever do a wholesale rewrite.
geekmama: Do you - or would you - write other pairings?
Ellis_Hendricks: I write other established pairings, e.g. John and Mary, and have written post-TFP fics where Mycroft and Lady Smallwood are a couple in some way, but I haven’t written other fan pairings. Everyone is totally free to ship who they like, but I guess I just write the ones that appeal to me.
geekmama: How would you define your style?
Ellis_Hendricks: One reviewer described it as ‘fluffy realism’, so I think I might pinch that! Generally, my fics are fairly close to canon, and use events in the series as a hook or jumping-off point.
geekmama: What's your method in approaching a story? Do you plan methodically, or wing it?
Ellis_Hendricks: I used to wing it, but I’m better at planning these days - it at least means that if I lose momentum or have a gap between chapters, I’ve got something to fall back on. When writing a multi-chapter fic, I used to publish a chapter and then write the next, but now I tend to try to write the whole thing first (or at least get a few chapters ahead) - much less stressful that way!
geekmama: Who do you write for? Is it you, or are you thinking about trying to please your audience?
Ellis_Hendricks: Certainly in the early days, I was just writing things that I would like to read, as there was no guarantee that anyone else would be interested! That’s probably changed a bit now, but I go by the rule that if I don’t find something engaging and entertaining, then I’ve got no right to expect that other people will!
geekmama: Do you have any WIPs, and do you think new chapters will ever see the light of day?
Ellis_Hendricks: No, I don’t have any WIPs - I’m not good at juggling more than one idea at a time, and I’m a bit of a compulsive completer, too. If I get a new idea while writing a fic, I make a few frenzied notes and then bury it until I’m ready.
geekmama: Are you working on anything at the moment?
Ellis_Hendricks: All I have is an outline for a one-shot, which I’m hoping will see the light of day before too long. These days, it’s really hard to come up with something that hasn’t already been done (and done well) by someone else!
geekmama: What’s harder for you - writing the start of a fic, or coming up with a decent title?
Ellis_Hendricks: The start of a story, because of that need to grab people (hopefully a reader might forgive a crap title?!). I had a teacher who said that once you’ve written something, you should always go back and jettison the first paragraph, because it’s usually a pointless preamble - not sure whether I agree with that entirely, but I do always check to see whether there’s a better way of just jumping into a story.
Reading other people's fics
geekmama: What are your favourite tropes in the fandom?
Ellis_Hendricks: Lots of the old favourites. Off the top of my head...bed-sharing, Molly as ‘the missus’, secret dating/marriage, being lab partners, accidental pregnancy.
geekmama: What things are likely to turn you off a fic?
Ellis_Hendricks: I try to be pretty open-minded, but I’m not keen on fics where Sherlock is portrayed as insanely jealous or aggressively dominant, or when Molly is a bit of a teenage fangirl, usually with little or no backbone. Another is where Tom turns out to be a total bastard, either before or after Molly breaks up with him - I know we don’t see a lot of him, but I don’t read him that way at all, and I like to think that (even after Jim from IT!) Molly has better judgement.
geekmama: Can you recommend 3 fics that are not your own?
Ellis_Hendricks: No, because I’ve read too many good ones. But I’m always excited when I see something new from geekmama, MizJoely, Writingwife83, waitingtobedistributed, OhAine, Quarto, sunken_standard, miabicicletta, forthegenuine or hobbitsdoitbetter.
geekmama: What compels you to leave comments on top of kudos?
Ellis_Hendricks: I don’t know exactly - but it does feel like a compulsion. If something has really impressed me, moved me, made me laugh, or has prompted me to go and read the whole thing again, then it definitely warrants a comment.
Quick-fire questions!
John's TEH moustache or his TAB moustache?
Ellis_Hendricks: TAB moustache, because it’s acceptable for the period setting. TEH moustache makes him look like a sad walrus.
Sherlock's purple shirt or white shirt?
Ellis_Hendricks: Can’t say I’m fussy in this regard, but...purple. Or the all-black get-up from ASiB.
Molly's stripy jumper or cherry cardigan?
Ellis_Hendricks: Stripy jumper - it looks cosy (although I would snag it on everything).
Mary's christening outfit or black-ops gear?
Ellis_Hendricks: Black-ops. I’d wear it when I’m surreptitiously moving my neighbours’ bins.
Submitted by @thisisartbylexie: Your way of presenting Mary and Molly's friendship is so realistic and rich. What made you want to write about it?
Ellis_Hendricks: Thank you - and that’s such a great question! (I also had no idea that artbylexie had read my fics, so that made my day.) Well, I’m a feminist, and I think that female friendships are worth celebrating whenever you can. Also, Molly and Mary are both such brilliant characters in their own rights, and I was keen to think about their lives outside of their relationships to the men in the series. It always fascinated me that Molly wasn’t a bridesmaid at the Watsons’ wedding, but she was made a godmother less than nine months later - so a strong friendship must have developed in that time. I tend to think that, because of her past, Mary wouldn’t have fostered many genuine friendships, but that she can’t help but make an exception for Molly. Makes me want to write something else for them now!
Submitted by @ohaine: this is a joint question for Ellis and geekmama: Do you feel that working together as betas has changed the way you both write?
Ellis_Hendricks: Yes, I’m certain it has made me up my game! The quality of geekmama’s own work (both creatively, in terms of plot, and technically, in terms of grammar and structure) is very high, so I suppose I have that to aspire to when I write, too. She’s great at spotting my errors or opportunities for improvement - I guess that could make me lazy (knowing she’ll pick them up), but I think it makes me more determined to do a good job first time around, so she doesn’t have too much to do!
Next week, April 5th 2019, the shoe is on the other foot and @ellis-hendricks puts her questions to @geekmama
Hello again Sherlollians and welcome to our fourth interview! This week @writingwife-83 interviews her friend @thisisartbylexie about art, fanfics and their collaborations. They’ve been brave enough to trust me with an audio file (thanks Lexie for the trans Atlantic IT support :) and below you’ll find a link to the soundcloud file, as well as links (below the cut) to the fan art and fiction they discuss. I hope you all enjoy!
writingwife83 interviews thisisartbylexie
Lexie’s Instagram
Lexie’s AO3 page
The Full House
The “Rain” piece
The “Bathtub” One
Examples of 2015 Calendar: Here, and here
Examples of 2016 Calendar: Here, and here
Example of 2017 Calendar: Here
2019 Calendar sale
2019 Calendar Stories
2015 Big Bang Challenge
2016 Remix Challenge
Zephyr
Half Agony, Half Hope
Next week, Friday 15th of March, @vermofftiss interviews @mizjoely
Hello again and welcome to our sixth interview. This time, it’s the turn of @ashockinglackofsatin to put @sunken-standard ‘s writing under the microscope. Together they chat about the early days of the Sherlock fandom, how music can influence writing, and why the I Love You scene helped end sunken’s own great hiatus.
For those who don’t know me: I am @ashockinglackofsatin on tumbr, satin_doll on AO3. My test subject...erm, sorry - interviewee - is the notorious sunken_standard, probably most famous for her two epic, novel-length stories Longer Than The Road That Stretches Out Ahead and Fumbling Toward Ecstasy, which can be found on AO3 (along with her other wonderful stories) and should be required reading for anyone aspiring to write fanfiction.
You should know, first off, that I’m crap at doing interviews, which I discovered years ago when I had to interview musicians and various personalities as a job. I didn’t last long at that job.
So here is Kat’s Idiotic Interview with @sunken-standard.
satin_doll: You’re very good at writing Sherlock’s emotional cluelessness without making him seem like an idiot or an ass. Can you talk a little about the way you see Sherlock’s character that allows you to do this?
sunken_standard: Thank you :D So the answer to this is going to carry through to some of the other questions, but basically, I write Sherlock as a version of myself. I feel a kinship with the character, a highly intelligent person surrounded by idiots and so, so frustrated by it, but even more frustrated by his own brain and the inability to control it. Probably autistic, just like I'm probably autistic (and I don't want to get into it but I'm not trying to co-opt an identity here or anything; I've tried to get a diagnosis and found out that's just not possible with my current healthcare options).
Anyway, one of my probably-autistic things is being hyper-aware of other people's emotions, but also having trouble identifying them and the appropriate responses. At times I do lack empathy, like I honestly can't understand why someone is feeling what they're feeling because I wouldn't feel that way in the same situation and it doesn't make sense. Sometimes I can empathize so much that it's overwhelming and I just kind of short-circuit, especially when it comes to grief or loss, and I end up being insensitive or just not saying or doing what a normal person would.
So basically, I approach his responses to other people's emotions the way I would my own, only stripped of female socialization and self-awareness.
satin_doll: How much do you draw on your own life and experiences in your fics?
sunken_standard: For scenarios and specific scenes, not a lot. For emotional and sensory experiences, more. I haven't done very much or lived to my full potential, so it's not a very deep well on either account. Every now and then anecdotes or details creep in (like Mars Cheese Castle and the “call me Daddy” during sex thing [which, for the record, was skeevy as fuck irl]), but most of it just comes from nowhere or stuff I saw on TV.
satin_doll: Both “Longer than the Road…” and “Fumbling Toward Ecstasy” are novel length stories. “Road”, however, is written without breaks/chapters. Did you ever consider breaking it up into parts or chapters? How hard was it to keep it all in one piece and how long did it take you to finish it?
sunken_standard: When I write, I usually just start and then go 'til it's done or I burn out. I got through three or four chapters' worth of FTE (and was on the verge of giving up until maybe_amanda convinced me not to). Since the story wasn't nearly finished and I wanted to start putting it out into the world (mostly because I have no patience, but also because I knew there was a window to stay relevant and a large number of people were looking for a longer, meatier [cough] post-TFP fic), I decided to start posting what I had and just write as I went because I was, in hindsight, probably hypomanic and I was keeping a good pace at that point.
I dunno, I think there was a lot more of that long-format thing happening in fic back then, where you'd have a 40k piece that only had breaks because of the word limit per post on LJ.
As far as how long it took, I don't remember. I know I started it February of that year and had probably a good 75% of it finished (all written at a tear, over the course of probably ten days or so, because when I was still smoking actual cigarettes I could and did do 3-5k words/ day), but then I dropped it and went on to try other ideas. I went back to it when those other stories fizzled, and I finished it in maybe another 2-3 weeks with editing and beta reading. I had some real problems with the ending and it was never good enough for me, but I just got to a point where I was sick of it and it was good enough.
So basically, it's harder for me to work in chapters than it is one long piece. There's more discipline to a chaptered work; each chapter is its own story, in a way, and each one needs to end on a certain kind of beat. I still don't feel like I have a knack for it, and I think if I did anything long like that again I'd have to write most of it without breaks and then shoehorn them in where I could later on.
satin_doll: You took a long hiatus from Sherlock fic after S2, and came back for S4. What was it about S4 that sparked your writing again?
sunken_standard: I don't really know. I mean, the ILY was a big thing, but I think S4 gave me more to work with for the kind of things I write (all the angst and inner monologue) than S3 or TAB. I had mixed feelings about S3. I didn't like Mary much for a long time because she was one of Moffat's women (and anyone who's seen my tumblr knows how I feel about that), but I finally unclenched after a while because I like Amanda Abbington a lot and Mary was preferable to Sarah Sawyer (who I'm more ambiguous about now, but really didn't like for a long time because there was something about her that I read as smarmy, though now I see her reactions as more subtly uncomfortable and kind of like “what's going on/ this is weird/ John's a nice guy but is everything around him always this weird?”). Anyway.
I did try writing a bit after S3, but I never finished any of it; I didn't really feel like there was a place in the fandom or much of a community at that time, either—at least, not like what I had been used to from the early days. The tribe that existed wasn't my tribe (any of them). I think I need a certain degree of shared enthusiasm to motivate me to keep writing. Like, I have a lot of ideas for fic in other fandoms, but they're dead or never existed in the first place. And I know I'll have some audience for the small fandoms and people will read and kudos and everything, but there's no one around to geek out with or bounce ideas off of, so it just isn't as appealing. If I'm going to be miserable and alone while writing something, it's going to be something I can at least make money off of, y'know?
satin_doll: Do you edit as you go or finish the story first and go back over it to edit?
sunken_standard: Edit as I go. When I get stuck, I break that cardinal rule of writing and go back over what I've written and nit-pick it to death. It's a bad habit, but at the same time, small changes have led to big developments in the course of the story later on. I mean, I think sometimes this is why I have so many unfinished things, but I've tried just writing through and that doesn't work for me either. Once I get to the end of something, I've already made most of big cuts and done a lot of the reworking, so the beta polishing isn't as labor-intensive. I'm one of those people that when I feel like something's finished, I don't want to have to go back to it again. And if I didn't edit as I went, it would kind of feel like redoing the whole story and that's extremely unappealing to me. It's kind of like baking—it's always better if you clean as you go, rather than waiting until the cake's out of the oven to do the dishes and put stuff away (which I do when I'm low on spoons, but it ends up seeming like double the work).
satin_doll: Do you proof it yourself or rely on someone else to proofread it for you? I’m talking technical details here, proofing as opposed to simple beta reading.
sunken_standard: Mostly proof myself, since I edit as I go (and proofing is inevitably part of that when the mistakes just jump out). My beta catches everything else (and she's amazing; I misuse words and just legit don't know spelling differences for a lot of things [stationary vs stationery] and I'm not great with grammar and prepositions because I'm an ignorant fucker with no education).
satin_doll: When did you first start writing? When did you first discover that you COULD write?
sunken_standard: I remember writing stories as a kid, but I burned them all when I was a teenager so I don't even know what most were about or anything. I do remember that I wrote one when I was in like 4th or 5th grade that was ST:TNG self-insert fanfic and I think the plot was me working with Data to bring Lal back. I know it was Data, because I had a huge crush on him as a kid. I really thought I could grow up to write ST:TNG novels at that point.
And as for CAN write—jury's still out on that one. Ask my 12th grade English teacher, who laughed in my face when I told him I was thinking of pursuing English so I could be a writer. But before that, I had some other teachers that used to give me A+s on my creative writing assignments (despite all the spelling and grammatical errors). In 11th grade, I had a really great teacher, Mr. Lansing, who turned me on to the good parts of American lit and really encouraged me to read (and write) what I liked, not just what other people told me I had to. He encouraged me when I applied for the Governer's school, too. (The Governer's School is this program in PA for kids who excel; it's like a summer camp for the elite nerds. They have a bunch of them, each for different areas—math, science, medicine, I think one that's like history/ government/ civics, and then one for the arts. For creative writing, they take a total of 20 kids—10 for poetry and 10 for prose. I tried for the poetry category and made the first round of cuts and went for a regional interview (with about 50 other kids, so like maybe 150 kids state-wide); long story short I didn't make it. I was the first alternate, meaning if somebody couldn't attend, I would get their spot. #11 out of 10. I was so crushed, because it basically reinforced what I'd been told by other people—I was a big fish in pond too small to even piss in and there were always going to be people better than me. I was already mostly checked-out when it came to academia and aspirations; after that there was just really no point to keep going.)
Anyway though, I did write bits and pieces here and there even after school, thinking one day I'd get my shit together and write my own Confederacy of Dunces and then off myself (it's still a viable plan). Then, in 2008 I was recently unemployed and everything in life was shitty, so I wrote a big happy-ending fic for The Doctor and Rose. It was kind of the right bit of media at the right time that inspired me. More about that later though.
satin_doll: What/who do you think has had the biggest influence on the development of your style?
sunken_standard: I've been asked this before, and I always feel like I'm a little pretentious and I trot out the same names (both fanfic authors and book authors), but I had a realization a while ago that I'm always missing one person—Vonnegut. I think he's got this kind of no-bullshit way of saying things that still manages to be poetic and delicate and that's what I most aspire to.
I think a lot of my style is influenced by film, too. Some influences are probably Todd Solondz, Richard Linklater, Kevin Smith, and John Waters, as far as the way I approach the reality within the story. I think I tend to focus on a lot of the same things—the weird, the mundane, the mildly uncomfortable—but I don't go nearly as far in any direction. I think even the way I string scenes together and the shifting of focus within my scenes between action, dialogue, and inner monologue are influenced by cinematography. I always say I'm just transcribing the movie in my head, so I mean, there's bound to be some kind of influence.
satin_doll: You’re noted for the banter between your characters, humorous and otherwise. Do you have rules/profiles for characters that establish their voices for you? Are there things, for example, that you think Sherlock or Molly simply would never say/do or would always say/do? How structured are these characters in your head when you start writing?
sunken_standard: It varies slightly from story to story/ universe to universe, but I think I have patterns for the banter (and I have a different set for Sherlock and John, and Sherlock and Mycroft, but there are common threads throughout). As for comedy, it's not quite straight man/ funny man, but I tend to default to Sherlock being more literal and deadpan and Molly being more expressive and emotive. I use the scraps of the dynamic the show's given us and just build on that. It's kind of formulaic, actually: Sherlock does a not-good thing (degree of severity varies), Molly reacts with a blend of annoyance and amusement while going along for the ride.
I have a kind of mental file for things I think would be out of character for each of them, but sometimes I like to try to find a way to get to one of those things and slip it into a fic organically. One of the reason I liked doing the one-line prompt fics so much was that so many of them could easily have been intros to the kind of fluff that makes me gag; I'm no fool, though, and I love me some low-hanging fruit, so I just adjust it to my tastes. I'm a never-say-never kinda gal. Mostly.
That being said, there are a lot of things that I think would take a lot of doing to make them be in-character. I don't think they'd ever use pet names for each other unless it was through gritted teeth or with at least a bit of irony (like how I used “yes, dear,” in FTE, and I think in some of the universes in Ficlet Cemetery). I can't see Sherlock ever doing housework unless it was for a case (though dishes and sanitizing surfaces are an exception, because both those chores are tangent to the kind of cleaning up after oneself one does in a lab setting, and imo that fits with his logic). I can't see him being very affectionate in public, except under rare circumstances when he might do an arm around the shoulders or a guiding palm to the small of the back.
And as for structure, I think they all start with the same scaffolding, but in every new universe they get draped slightly differently according to variations in backstory or tone or genre or whatever. Or like, they're already sculpted, but the lighting changes. I think that as I write, they take on different nuances and acquire more depth, though. Like it wasn't really until a few chapters in to FTE that I got a fuller picture of the Molly I was writing, even though I had the rough idea of her backstory from pretty much the beginning. Same with Longer Than the Road, too. As I come up with details of someone's past, I experience those scenarios and it makes me rethink and fine-tune everything about them in what I've already written, and adds more texture as I keep going.
satin_doll: You’ve listed a playlist for “Longer than the Road…” Do you write to music? How much does music inspire your writing? Does every story have a playlist?
sunken_standard: It's funny, but I don't listen to music nearly as much as I did even 5 years ago. Not sure why, honestly, maybe something to do with my mental health and overstimulation? So I don't write to music much anymore. Not every story has a playlist or songs attached (I don't think any of the FC stuff does, at least not in any significant way), but it seems like my best work is inspired by music in some way.
FTE didn't really have a soundtrack, but I listened to a lot of the music I had in common with the version of Molly that I was writing—very 90s alternative and pop rock. Lots of Pulp (which I picked as Molly's favorite band because I think they're Loo's favorite, or one of her favorites). For the proposal, I had “Dreams” by The Cranberries on a loop as I wrote. There's just something musically about that song that's full of anticipation and the wavy kind of guitar (I don't know the music terms and it's been so many years since I was into anything instrument-related that I'm not even sure how the sound is made, like a whammy bar or wiggling their fingers on the frets or whatever but anyway) just has this kind of wavering emotion that makes it feel like it's on the cusp of something. And also it's the big romance song from every coming-of-age thing ever, and so just hearing it is like an auditory shorthand for breathless, adventurous romance, at least for women of a certain age (namely, my age, and I'm only a year younger than Loo/ Molly). There was another scene—I can't remember what it was without rereading the fic—that I spent like three days listening to nothing but “The Way” by Fastball. It might have been the thing with the drink testing and then the sex on the sofa and the cake baking. (As an aside, I just started listening to the song and immediately got hit with a sense memory of night-wet spring air blowing in my window, because that's what the weather was when I was writing to this and it gives me a weird yearning pull in the back of my throat, like nostalgia almost but something else in it. Like, did you ever hear a pop song that taps into some deeper part of the human experience, both musically and lyrically, and you just feel like there's some universal truth in it that's too much to totally grasp? That's how I feel about both of those songs. Anyway.)
Another story that had a few songs attached was Stainless, Captive Bead. Radiohead's “Creep” was what they were listening to in the tattoo parlor, and a lot of the sex bits were written while listening to Nine Inch Nails' “Closer” (look, if it's set in the 90s and there's fucking in it, I'm going to find a way to relate it to “Closer,” because that song is just dark sex and angst set to synthesizers and a high hat).
Also, sometimes when I write I listen to ambient noise stuff, cityscapes or rain or whatever fits the tone of the piece and my mood. I can't listen to anything for too long, though, because I get listener fatigue and I burn out faster.
satin_doll: Have you ever considered self-publishing your stories as a book or series of books?
sunken_standard: I've tried to file off the serial numbers on the Girlfriend series, but it was harder than I thought it would be so I back-burnered it. I still like to think that one day I will, it's a life goal, but if I put too much pressure on myself I only make it worse and nothing gets done.
satin_doll: You seem to have a detailed backstory for every character in your stories, from Janine to Molly’s mother. Do you work these out beforehand or do they just happen in your head as you write?
sunken_standard: Both? I kind of touched on it earlier, but I usually have an idea of the backstory, the bones at least, and then as I write it gets richer. I have multiple headcanons for every character, so I just start off with one of those. Like I have five different families for Molly, all things I was coming up with when I was writing other stories. Hell, I've got like five different Uncle Rudys (most of them highly unpleasant and most likely triggering).
I have a habit of just sitting and thinking about a character, like “what would make them this way?” armchair psychoanalysis stuff. And if I can establish a plausible-sounding backstory, I have a better foundation for introducing non-canonical traits or details. I think that's the downfall of a lot of fic authors—they just write a canon character as they would an OC and expect us to play along without demonstrating any internal logic. Maybe I'm just picky; there's certainly an element of that, too.
satin_doll: How detailed is the story in your mind before you start writing it? Do you work from plans and outlines with every story?
sunken_standard: It all depends on the story. Sometimes I have a whole series of detailed scenes just waiting in my head to be written out. Sometimes I only have one thing and I just keep going. I say I use an outline, but it's not a proper outline. More like a collection of notes and bullet points of what I want to happen and what kind of beats I want to hit. I usually keep it at the bottom of my working document so I don't have to switch to another doc to look at it if I need to.
satin_doll: Where does a story begin with you? What constitutes the “urge” to write? You once mentioned (in a comment reply I think) that you know the ending of the story first and then write the rest of the story to get there. What do you do when a story goes off track? How do you get it back to the way you planned it, or do you even try to do that?
sunken_standard: (I don't know why my document formatting went tits-up here, so I'll answer 1 & 2 both here)
So stories are a visceral kind of thing. I always have ideas. Seriously, give me a theme or a title or something and I can spit out a summary and details in as long as it takes to type it out. But actually crafting prose (can I sound more pompous?) is best likened to the urge to poop. Classy, right? I said it was visceral. Really though, it's that same kind of state of heightened awareness/ arousal (in the strictest medical sense of the word, not sexual arousal), something is happening and if it doesn't things are going to get weird and I'm going to be very uncomfortable for a very long time. Also, like pooping, if it's not ready, no amount of grunting or straining is going to make it happen, and it might even make it worse in the long run. As you can tell, I've been very, very constipated for the last year.
Anyway.
Stories going off track... a lot of the time I just let it happen because it's taking me to a better place than where I thought it was going to end up.
satin_doll: Quote from you: “I spend way too much time thinking about who Molly is as a person. Writing porn and comedy both have their appeal, but I really like sitting down and thinking about what makes any given character tick and how they might feel about what's happening around them. 30s and single has so much baggage to it, even if all the women's magazine articles and whatever-wave-we're-up-to-now feminist thought pieces say it's a myth or a stereotype or whatever. It's a truth we don't want to be true because it's not fair. I mean, it's not the thing that solely defines any woman, but it's there, just like cellulite and brand new and worrying moles and our favorite brand of whatever suddenly being discontinued (or significantly changed) because some marketing person decided it was too 'old.' But anyway, such is life. And I like putting that in fic.”
Do you write character studies to use as a reference for your stories, or just wing it for each individual piece?
sunken_standard: The character study is dead, isn't it? Like, as standalone fic. Never see them anymore, which is a real pity. I used to write them (or, well, start them, heh) before I took a break from writing/ fandom, mostly to try to get some of my headcanons down in some kind of usable way. But I haven't really written a character study (in prose, at least) since 2012 or so.
So when I write, I keep two documents open—the working copy that's a first-through-final draft and a “notes/ cut bits/ things to work in somehow” document. In the notes document I usually keep any character details (backstory or how I want them to react to something later, whatever). There are themes I go back to over and over, like a cluster of traits I reuse in some fashion because I think they fit the character (Mycroft and disordered eating, Molly as a middle child in some fashion, John as the child of alcoholics, etc.), so a lot of that just lives in my head. Any bits of characterization specific to a story go in the notes doc for that story, while any generic thoughts or something that I think I might want to use later gets stuck in another document full of random ideas, snippets of dialogue, jokes, AUs I'll never write, that kind of thing. I've got a few of those docs from different writing periods. They're mostly just a way to externalize a thought so I don't lose it; I hardly ever go back to them for anything.
satin_doll: What was your first involvement with fanfiction? Where did it all start?
sunken_standard: I started to answer this in another question; basically, fanfic's been in my wheelhouse in one way or another since I was a kid (Star Trek novels are fanfic, period). I discovered fanfiction back in the days of eXcite searches and webrings while looking for translations of Inu Yasha manga scans; I stumbled upon an English-language fancomic/ doujinshi called Hero in the 21st Century and it was so well-written, funny and poignant and well-researched I was just drawn in. I still think about it and the author's other works to this day. I did pick at the idea of writing myself, sometimes even put down scenes or outlines and did hours of research, but never did the thing.
And then, in 2008, the stars aligned and I started a thing. Journey's End spawned a ton of Doctor Who fic, and that was good, because I could just kind of slip mine in there and I probably wouldn't get a lot of criticism or attention. So I wrote like two chapters without any idea of how it was going to end, and I submitted it to Teaspoon and an Open Mind (which was the Doctor Who fic archive at the time; it was curated/ moderated and where you went when you wanted to read something you knew would be good, or at least conform to certain standards, unlike The Pit [which is still garbage today]). And I got rejected. My grammar and spelling were awful (I didn't even have spell-check in whatever program I was using) and they said the whole thing had good bones, but I really needed to work on the English before they'd look at it again. Getcherself a beta, they suggested, and I think they had a forum where writers and betas could connect. So I got myself a beta and she stuck with me for like 30 chapters, answering questions and keeping my characterization on-track and basically re-teaching me the rules of written English. I tried to email her a few years ago to thank her again, but her email bounced back. Her name was Julia and if she sees this, thank you Julia. You're a wonderful person.
Anyway, I wrote lots in that fic universe for like 2 months, then got another job and tapered off. I abandoned it completely after a year. Life got in the way of a lot of things, and the next time I was really inspired to write anything was a couple years later, for Supernatural. I only put it on my LJ, never posted to a community or anything, and no one read it. Literally, I don't think the post got any hits at all and for sure no one commented. I sometimes think about putting it on AO3 just because. And then Sherlock happened and here we are.
satin_doll: Do you think writing fanfic has hurt or hindered your original work? Why or why not? (that looks like a high school test question - sorry!)
sunken_standard: Lol @ test question :D
I'm not really sure, tbh. On one hand, I only have so much creative energy—it's definitely a finite resource, and a scarce one—and devoting it to fanfic diverts it from any original work. On the other hand, all writing is practice. The only way to improve is to keep doing, no matter what it is. So in that sense, fanfic's certainly helped me to find a comfortable voice and a prose style that works for me. There are still problems to solve, figuring out the best approach to a scene or story from a technical standpoint (stuff like tense and perspective and all that), so I'm always learning something as I go. Mixed bag, really.
satin_doll: What was it about the Sherlock/Molly dynamic that got you started on a piece like “Longer Than the Road…” What did you see there that made you want to explore it in such detail?
sunken_standard: So I always talk about how Sustain was my come-to-Jesus moment with Sherlock and Molly. Here's something I've never told anybody, not even maybe_amanda (because I was kind of ashamed, but not for the reasons people might think): before ever reading Sustain, I started a story that was Sherlock/ John and Sherlock/ Molly. I had it roughly outlined and a few pages written, but I just kind of lost the feeling of it and it was starting to get problematic for character motivations, yada yada, so into the scrap heap it went. It had a passing similarity to Sustain because of a platonic-sex-for-pregnancy element (hence why I never talked about it), but the major difference was that it was going to end up as a kind of polyamorous arrangement, Sherlock loving both of them and having a kind of co-parenting triad. In mine, John wanted a baby, and Molly wanted her own baby, and Sherlock thought “best of both worlds!” and why do IVF when you can write awkward angst-fucking instead. But yeah, I never finished it.
Anyway, I always saw something there, but I couldn't make it work in a way that was consistent with my own characterization of Sherlock until after Series 2. Even in Series 1, he looks at her with a kind of fondness and a sort of bewilderment that just lends itself to nerds in love. At the time (and even now, tbh), I kind of attributed that to BC having a crush on Loo (and oh man do I have theories, which are gossipy and gross and not the kind of thing I usually even bother having opinions about, but have you listened to the S1 commentary and some of the interviews around that time? there's something more there) and that kind of just spilling over onscreen and it working for the editor because it makes BC look sexy.
I mean look, I make no secret of the fact I started off shipping Sherlock with John almost exclusively (though I'd read just about anything), and after S1 aired it was just a different time. I get really annoyed when people talk shit about the pairing and the people who still ship them, because most of them weren't even in the fandom at the time and didn't have the same experience as the OGs. When Series 1 aired, hardly anyone knew who BC was, and Martin was just the guy from The Office and some other shows that were kind of unremarkable; most of the fandom was composed of old-school ACD Sherlockians and a few stragglers (like me) that got there from Doctor Who or were just general mystery/ thriller fans that got sucked in. We had a different perception of it because we weren't led into it by Star Trek or Hobbits or MCU; the characters didn't have that baggage attached for us. A lot of us already had a perception of Holmes and Watson as some shade of gay, so it was no great leap to see the very obvious romance (and yes, they all called it that in interviews at the time) onscreen as a romantic one. Martin, when asked, said basically that he'd play the next series (S2) however they wrote it, and if romance was there he'd go down that road. Whatever, I don't need to defend it because people think what they think anyway.
.
Anyway, getting back to the actual question instead of a million tangents and rants, I think I saw a lot of the things that have since become like backbone tropes of the pairing (even in canon, with the whole “alone, practical about death” thing). Their interactions in S2 were great; everything hinted at more than what was on-screen. And I really liked the idea of exploring the dynamic that was pretty much already there, as far as Molly having both a crush and self-respect and Sherlock suddenly having to rely on this person (that he picked because she was reliable to begin with) who's a friend, but also kind of a stranger in the way that a lot of the people we consider friends are (at least, friends made in adulthood; work-friends, church-friends, club-friends, gym-friends). Past that, I really saw the potential for character growth stemming from their interactions, but not like her humanizing him or whatever; both of them gaining insight about themselves, with the other person (and their relationship) as a vehicle for those realizations. I think I could have done better on that front, but hindsight blah blah.
satin_doll: How familiar were you with the Sherlock Holmes character before the BBC series aired, and what made you want to write about him?
sunken_standard: So I wasn't very familiar at all. Just what was in the general cultural lexicon, maybe a few episodes of the Granada series on PBS as a kid, a few of the stories that I just couldn't get into when I tried to read them because I hate Victorian prose (hate it, everything about it, I won't read anything written before 1920 or so because I just hate it [Wilde being the singular exception, but I even get bogged down by him]). Oh, and the RDJ movie, which wasn't really Sherlock Holmes to me, but just like a Victorian-era action movie. After S1, I just devoured canon (though, full disclosure, I still haven't read all of it, probably only about 80%), then moved on to other adaptations and canon-era fic and pastiches, read a bunch of extra-canon material on the internet. So as far as that goes, I'm very much a poseur and newbie in the greater Sherlock Holmes fandom. At least I did my research?
Anyway, it really took the modern adaptation and BC's performance to make the character resonate with me. The aspects he chose to play up—the frustration and impatience and frantic mental energy—just hit a nerve. He really channeled the “gifted” experience (which I suspect was just a lot of BC himself bleeding through). Finally I could use a fictional character to bemoan how stupid everyone around me was and sound like a complete asshole and be completely in-character! The heavens smiled upon me.
Really though, I was initially attracted to how cerebral it was and how smart the fandom was overall. It was the early fandom (and I mean early, like days after episode 1 aired) that drew me in, at least to a participatory (vs. consumptive) level. Lots of very clever, very educated, very queer people having these deep, insightful discussions about everything (sometimes only tangentially related to the show). When I did start writing, I didn't have to dumb anything down; the challenge was to sound smarter than I actually am. And, I mean, I got to dredge up a lot of my own emotional baggage from being a perpetual outsider, which is always cathartic (and probably not very healthy, long-term, because it's not resolving anything, just exploiting myself, but that's a can of worms).
satin_doll: Are you more drawn to Sherlock or Molly as a character, or both equally? Why?
sunken_standard: Sherlock, I think, for the reasons described in the last question.
I don't generally identify with female characters in fiction, since my own identification as female is tenuous (and in general they're poorly written and poorly realized, but that's another story). I mean, I can draw from my own experiences as a (mostly) female-shaped person with female socialization, but I have a hard time intuiting feminine and it's harder for me to write a “normal” woman.
Paraphrasing something I read in an interview with another fic author I admire, writing a woman is always a self-portrait, and how much of yourself do you really want to reveal? Since I don't know how to woman correctly, I'm always afraid I'm going to slip up and hit the wrong beat for what a normal woman is and end up ruining the characterization. I do manage to channel a lot of my own frustrations with men, relationships, being a single and childless woman over 30, and the patriarchy into Molly's character, though.
I mean, don't get me wrong, I really love Molly (and always have—I was one of the first to use her as a main character and not just a punching bag or a punchline). I love her sense of humor and her job and her fashion sense, all of it. She's not one-dimensional. It's just easier for me to write Sherlock than it is to make decisions about who Molly is.
satin_doll: You are “internet famous” for Longer Than the Road (rightfully so!) What about that story do you think is so affecting for fans? How has “Road” influenced subsequent work you’ve done in the Sherlolly ship?
sunken_standard: You know, I'm really not sure why it seems to resonate with people. Maybe the homesickness or the exhaustion that comes with impermanence (and I mean, we all feel that on an existential level, everything's always changing and it's faster every year, just existing is like trying to walk in an earthquake). Or the healing/ recovery aspect of it (I tried to balance both sides, the affected and the caregiver). Or maybe I just wrote it at the right time (when there wasn't much else out there) and people kept coming back to it because it was familiar.
As for how it's influenced subsequent work... I'm sure it has, but I don't know how, exactly. I still think it's the best thing I've ever written and the closest to something literary I'll ever get, so in a way it's an albatross (no one ever wants to be reminded that they already peaked). I get frustrated when my newer work doesn't live up to the standard I set for myself with it. That frustration doesn't make me a better writer, it just makes me tired, so everything I do now is paler.
One thing it did do was cement my characterizations of Sherlock and Molly and the dynamic between them. I tend to write them a certain way and don't deviate from that, and that all has roots in the push-pull, love-hate thing I established in Longer Than the Road. I can't write Molly without a degree of contempt for Sherlock and I can't write Sherlock without a degree of shame and contrition in his feelings toward Molly.
satin_doll: How does feedback affect what you write? How important is it? Is it more important that a reader “get” the point of the work or just that they like it? What kind of reader do you write for?
sunken_standard: I try not to let feedback affect my writing. I mean, I only get positive feedback, really, so it's a high. I'm not trying to brag or anything; I count myself lucky that I don't get the shit others do (though I honestly think anybody that posts on The Pit is opening themselves up to it because it's a garbage dump, but I've never liked the site, so). I try not to let it go to my head or anything though.
I also try not to let it influence the direction my writing takes; I might do a comment fic or write a silly HC or something, but I like to keep my substantial pieces pure, so to speak. Though sometimes a comment sparks something and a whole other fic grows out of it, so I fail there, I guess. Sometimes it's a lot of pressure when people say they want to see more of something, or want me to write a kind of specific scenario, so I usually just don't, and then I feel bad about not giving nice people what they want and it starts this whole weird spiral of guilt and obligation and then swinging the other way and getting (internally) belligerent over not owing anybody anything. I uh, have a complicated relationship with my work being acknowledged in any capacity.
As for people “getting” it... I don't know if they really do or not. Sometimes I get comments and I can tell they're definitely on my wavelength and they picked up on an allusion or a detail or just saw or felt everything in the scene like I did when I was laying it out. Once in a while I get a comment that has a different interpretation than what I was trying to get across, and that's really cool because it makes me re-examine my own work and see it from a different perspective (which I think makes me stronger for the next thing). It's really validating when someone “gets” it, but at the same time, I write to entertain other people (as well as myself), so as long as they like it, I feel accomplished.
It's cliché, but I write for an audience of one. I've tried to write outside my taste and it doesn't end well. Sometimes I write tropes that aren't my bag (like the Wiggins “the Missus” thing, or kidfic/ pregnancy), but it's kind of like a nod and wink to people who do like it, rather than outright pandering. At least, that's what I tell myself. Sometimes you need to try on every bra in your size, even the ones you know you hate, just to make sure you're getting the right one, y'know?
satin_doll: Do you think fanfic has changed since you began writing it? If so, how?
sunken_standard: Yeah, but I don't think it's a good or bad thing. And it depends on where you look and what you consume.
In the last like five years, Tumblr's purity culture has shamed a lot of kink back into the closet, I think, and people (in my fandoms, at least) aren't really writing on the edge. I see darkfic, but it's about as dark as the night sky over Hong Kong. I think people are afraid to go really dark anymore because they don't want the backlash from a generation fed on a diet of pink princesses and promise rings. And I think everyone's desire for happy-ending escapism has ratcheted up because the real world is shit and TV shows are all playing Russian roulette with surprise deaths to add drama (thanks, The Walking Dead, for making that element so ubiquitous that the rest of the mainstream picked it up and ran).
On the other hand, I'm not seeing near the amount of badfic as I used to. It was never as much of a problem on the old platforms and AO3 (compared to The Pit), but there were always some. I mean, there are still lots of turds out there, but they all seem a bit more polished these days. As far as the English goes, at least. Maybe my fandoms are just maturing.
I think people interact a lot differently now, too. This is going to kind of tie into the next question, but the types of feedback are different now and I think authors have changed what and how they produce to kind of chase the dragon of positive feedback. Like, when I started, most public archives (read: not just one author's own website with all their fic, like you found in webrings a lot)—both completely open and curated—had some way to submit comments and allowed author replies. There was really no other way to let an author know you liked their work. I mean, some sites tracked numbers for bookmarking features or hit counts, but those weren't as... active(? I guess), they weren't really participatory for the reader.
Then AO3 came along and started the kudos thing (which people still bitch about because they think they get fewer comments; like be happy you get anything, ya fuckin' ingrates). Kudos count became a de facto rating system, thanks to the sort feature. Whenever I start reading for a new fandom, I pick a pairing, pick a rating, and sort by kudos. Sure, popularity isn't the best way to find good fic, but in any decent-sized fandom you can assume that the stuff on the first page is going to be written to a minimum standard. Anyway, one of the ways to game the system a bit on kudos is to do a multichapter fic; I've seen works that are like 80+ 200-word chapters (don't get me started on omnibus fic across fandoms). They aren't the best fic by far, but they pick up kudos every chapter, often from guests that are just people not signed in or on a different device. I'm not knocking it, exactly, since it front-paged me for more than one fic. Part of me still feels like it's disingenuous, but I also recognize that I should pull the stick out of my ass. Anyway, the kudos count was kind of the death of the one-shot longfic (which, when I wrote Longer Than the Road, was a pretty common format).
And now, it seems like the Tumblr fic culture is writing ficlets (under 1k words) and posting without a beta (and I do it too). Fic consumption has become a social activity. Reblogs aren't always about one's personal taste, they're a social signal of group affiliation. If you don't reblog certain things, you're suspect and given a wide berth. Woe betide the poor fucker that crosses party lines and posts one of the verboten ships. And I mean, this isn't just one fandom, I've seen complaints about it from all corners—Supernatural, Star Wars, MCU, Steven Universe ffs. I think when you have predominantly female spaces, you're always going to have an element of Mean Girl culture, y'know? I'm probably going to get my fingernails pulled out for being misogynistic or some kind of -phobic for saying that.
Whatever. It's true that a kind of hive-mind develops and all kinds of tropes and HCs get repeated until they become fanon. I mean, that kind of thing's always happened, but the whole culture of Tumblr forces you to identify yourself and your group affiliation by what fanon you subscribe to, probably because it's harder to find your tribe without dedicated community spaces like LJ had. With Tumblr, you basically have to trawl tags until you find your echo chamber.
I'm old and I fear change.
Tumblr ain't all bad, though. It's very collaborative, kind of like the old-school round-robin fic people used to do. Authors and artists riff off each other and a lot of really cool stuff comes out of these casual collaborations. And I do like the prompt lists; I remember kinkmemes and prompting communities back on LJ, but it feels more off-the-cuff and spontaneous to just give someone a numbered list and let them roll the dice for you.
You know what else has changed? We're kind of in a new era of epistolary storytelling with memes and shitposts; stories emerge that aren't prose (though might contain a prose element). I mean, people did mixed-media epistolary in 2008, but it was a lot harder then (create graphic, hand-code into text piece, hand-code all the italics and bolding and font changes to denote various media types, if you're really a wizard add in-line text links to audio clips to add ambiance). It's a lot easier to add a new thing on each reblog now, like someone does a video, followed by a 3-panel comic sketch, followed by a ficlet, and then a gif, you get the idea. I like it; it's just a shame that it's so ephemeral. Maybe that's part of the charm, though.
satin_doll: You’ve talked a bit about your experience with LiveJournal in the “old days”; what other platforms have you used in the past? Which ones did you like best?
sunken_standard: I went into it a little in another question, but I first posted fic to A Teaspoon and an Open Mind (www.whofic.com). Honestly, I don't remember much about it. I'm not sure, but I don't think they had a richtext editor at the time (2008) and I had to hand-code some or all of it. I vaguely remember having to do HTML for italics and paragraphs. I know I had to do that on LJ sometimes because the formatting from whatever word processor I was using at the time did some hinky shit sometimes on a copy/paste.
Next came LiveJournal (and DreamWidth, but I really only used that to back up my old LJ blog). It wasn't better than Teaspoon, just different. Teaspoon is niche, only fanfic and only for one fandom (well, one universe of fandoms, really, with all the spin-offs), where LJ was all kinds of stuff under one roof—personal blogs, communities with various intents and levels of participation, fanfic, fanart, gossip blogs, you name it. I liked the friendslist view thing; it was like proto-Tumblr. And you could talk to people on the threads; even personal blogs were like a forum.
I joined AO3 in 2011, after waiting like six months for more invites to open up, but I didn't post anything there until 2012. I'm really happy with it as a platform for posting fic. I like the editor and I like the tags, ratings, and sort features. I never even considered posting to ff.net because I'm a snobby fucker (and they can blow me with their whole “adult content ban” that still continues to be selectively enforced). Anyway, I preferred having my fic on AO3 before I even left LJ, since I didn't have to split my stories into parts because of character limits.
And then Tumblr took over and I kind of hate it, since you can't have conversations anymore, it's like leaving passive-aggressive post-its and there's no editing something once it gets reblogged, so typos and bad links and all that are always there. And even when the original is deleted, the reblog keeps going, which I really hate from a creator's standpoint (though the archivist/ curator part of me likes it because it doesn't get lost in the ether [the recent purge notwithstanding] like so much of the early days of the web did). Tumblr's really bad for posting anything but ficlets and links to fic on other sites.
satin_doll: What would your ideal fanfic publishing platform be like?
sunken_standard: Honestly, AO3 is just about as close to ideal as I can think of. I just wish you could directly upload images instead of having to do code jiggery-pokery to link to something hosted elsewhere. I've tried a million times and followed all the tutorials in an attempt to add the cover art to Longer Than the Road (gifted to me by @thecollapseinwonderland), but it just never works. It shows on the preview, but not on the live version and it's frustrating because I'm computer literate, goddamnit. Anyway. And I mean, in an ideal world there would be better ways to find quality fic to my taste, but there's no real way to add a rating system (like 5-stars) independent of kudos without discouraging authors (and I mean the potential for abuse and bullying is just too great).
Additional reader questions from @ohaine:
Stylistically, Longer than the road is quite different from the other fics at the top of the AO3 Sherlolly ratings; stream of consciousness at the beginning, and the nested internal thoughts. How much of that was a deliberate departure, and how much was you just channelling the story as it came out of you?
sunken_standard: At the time I was really influenced by a Sherlock/ John fic (I can't remember the title or author, it was 7 years ago, but I feel bad about forgetting). It was originally on LJ and their journal was a lightish blue color and the font was small (if anybody remembers this... there was something with an EKG and I think something with shooting up blood as a romantic gesture?). It was Sherlock POV and the author had a really unique way of presenting internal monologue. Anyway, at that time there was a lot of experimental writing going on on the slash side of things, it was great. To be perfectly honest, I hadn't read a lot of Sherlolly fic at that time because what did exist (as far as happy-ending/ happy-for-now stories vs like darkfic/ angst) was really, really not to my taste (the exception being Sustain). So it was only deliberate in that—even when I wasn't being experimental—I didn't want to write Harlequin books.
I wish a story like that would just come out of me. I mean, to a degree it did, but doing the thoughts and sub-thoughts was work. I mean, I've always been a brackets-and-footnotes kind of person because I like reading it, but the way I did the thoughts was more like writing HTML than a regular rambling narrative.
I think I read recently (maybe on a blog post?) that Riders on the storm was the original inspiration for Longer than the road. Was the scene in the storm your starting point with the story, or where did you begin?
sunken_standard: That was the first scene I wrote; at that time I had a really nebulous idea of the story. The imagery was really clear in my head, though the very earliest concept took place in the desert—the classic American image of the road going on forever and rusty sands and the heatwaves rising up off the asphalt. I'm not sure how it morphed into North Dakota, I might have seen a picture of lightning over the plains or something.
So after S2 aired, I just kind of sat and chewed it over for a month before any really strong ideas emerged for a story. I had to find the internal logic for the kind of plot I wanted to write—namely, them on the lam together. Making Sherlock have a breakdown seemed pretty natural at the time; in ACD canon (and many, many pastiches) he was always having them and going off to the country to recuperate. But he was supposed to be dead and he was all over the tabloids, so it's not like he could just move to some sleepy little village and hope no one recognized him.
I thought about sending him to Europe, using the places ACD Holmes went after Reichenbach (and I did start more than one with them in Florence, a few incarnations of which were Molly/ Irene wanklock PWPs, I actually think one of the Rusty Beds stories came from that, but I digress). The only problem with Europe is the language barrier; I thought it was too convenient to make Molly fluent in another language (she might have some conversational Spanish from a holiday or something, but that's it), so I had to make them go somewhere where English was common enough. I also didn't want them too far from the UK; I wanted Sherlock to be able to get on a plane and be back within half a day (I realize this isn't the reality of flying, but deus ex Mycroft, so). So Asia, Australia/ NZ, and even South Africa were out, leaving Canada, the US, or parts of the Caribbean. I didn't want them to by happy, so they didn't go to the Caribbean. Canada's great, but it's too nice and they also don't have deserts. America it was; it also really added some background tension because I think a lot of non-USians have a love-hate with us. Movies are okay, music too, and of course the tech and consumer innovations, but everything else is garbage and we're all just rude, ignorant, obese Yosemite Sams. For someone like Sherlock, I think the US is the last place he'd want to go (even though canon ACD Holmes was really into America). And I mean, write what you know, so that was that sorted.
Once I got them here I needed them to do something; I wanted to tell a very intimate story, and that would be boring if they were just living in a 2BR cape cod in Jersey. And I mean, what city would really suit Sherlock? Where could he have a life that wasn't London? Anyway, the inside of a car is just about as intimate as two people can get, and the greatest tradition in American literature and film is the road trip, and that was when I knew I had a solid foundation for a story. After that, it just kind of flowed as I planned the route.
Perfect, not perfect-perfect is a beautiful, brave piece that I think has a real air of authenticity to it. It was a very tough read, purely because of the journey the characters are on, and I wondered how difficult it was for you to write? Was it catharsis or an emotional black hole?
sunken_standard: You know, I'm not really sure if it was either catharsis or black hole. A lot of the particulars and even the emotional places in that story aren't mine, but an amalgam of some other friends' experiences with polyamory. My own experience with it was pretty shit and pretty unremarkable, but I learned a lot about the human heart and how some people can lie to themselves because they can't let go of their ideals and their identities (I'm also still a little bitter), but that's got nothing to do with the price of tea in China, so moving on.
Since a lot of those experiences weren't mine, it wasn't raw, so it wasn't very hard on me, personally. I think I wrote it in like three days? I don't think I wanted it to be a slog, so that's why it's in present tense and very sparse and matter-of-fact. Dispassionate, even. There are times when I'm writing really emotional stuff that I'm disconnected from it (which is a fuckin' mercy, because most of the time I'm right there going through it, over and over for days sometimes until I get the scene right and can move on to the next thing), and this was one of those times. I was writing this alongside the Girlfriend series, so there was some overlap there; I'd already done the emotional labor for everything up to Mary's death and I was thinking of different angles of approach for later installments of the series.
The most “me” part of it is near the beginning, writing my way around the bisexual experience from someone else's point of view. I don't have a lot in common with any of the characters; they're a higher social class, urban, products of a more liberal culture, yada yada, but there are some things that are just kind of universal and misunderstood about bisexuals, the stereotypes that we have to contend with and end up internalizing.
Oh, and the perpetual alienation is all me, too. Molly's feelings of being left behind are mine, how I felt every time friendships drifted apart or when female friends got married and then had kids. So a lot of the fatalism and insecurity are me projecting how I would feel or react. I kind of like depressed Molly, more than the perpetual ray of sunshine/ cinnamon roll at least.
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Many thanks to sunken_standard for taking the time to answer these questions!
And many thanks and much love to OhAine for all her hard work putting this project together! It’s been fun and enlightening!
Next week, Friday 29th March, it’s the turn of @ellis-hendricks and @geekmama
