This interview was first posted Feb 2006.
This update we feature the talented, award-winning, and gracious Anjou! You can find her
stories at her site, No Other: Love Stories for Mulder and Scully.
When did you start writing XF fanfic? How did you start?
The genesis of my fic writing (or publishing) really is in reading X-Files fic. I’d been involved in soap opera and Star Trek discussion forums for years, either as an interested lurker (ST) or as an involved discussion participant (soaps), but I’d really never had much to do with fanfic. In fact, I had a very negative opinion of fic in general, since it had been such a divisive topic on the Star Trek forums on USENET, not to mention the fact that the quality of writing that I saw in the soap fandoms was, quite frankly, very poor.
In a general discussion on a soap forum, I explained what I thought should happen with a specific storyline, as opposed to what was happening, and I was pressed by several participants to write a fic. I kept demurring, and finally, my true opinion came out. One of my defenders on the thread was Dianora, who defended me with the caveat that all fanfic wasn’t poorly written, and that in her primary fandom, the X-Files, fanfic was of very high quality. Since I’d been a viewer from the first episode, that piqued my interest. So, I started reading in mid-season 5.
Along the way, I dragged my sister, Suzanne_laura, kicking and screaming in protest, into the fandom. She hated sci fi, she protested. She thought the show was stupid, and made no sense. Then, one day she really watched it, and after that, it was a daily barrage of questions and requests for fanfic, as she didn’t have a home computer at the time. The conversations that we were having about the show were very much in line with the way we’ve always dissected narrative fiction, whether it was visual or literal, but the fanfic added a new element to it that hadn’t been there prior to this. Not that I hadn’t written fanfic, but back in the Stone Age, we didn’t call it that. We, my friends and I, used to write long involved romantic tales about our celebrity crushes suddenly becoming widowed (I was raised Catholic, could you tell?) and falling madly in love with us thirteen-year-olds. Age, distance, ridiculousness, and the potential for criminal charges was no impediment whatsoever!
Even before the stories in the notebooks that I should really burn were written down, my nature as a storyteller was ingrained. Suzanne, who is my elder by two years, used to instruct me as to what kind of a bedtime story she wanted when we were little girls. It was usually some kind of wild X-over fic, involving characters from popular and/or cool TV shows of the day. She would also give me an idea of what kind of storyline she wanted to see. We neither recall how this tradition evolved, but by the time I was 9 or 10, it was fixed bedtime behaviour. After the story was told, she would critique my dramaturgy, dialogue and structure. Sometimes, I would have to tell the story over and over until I got it ‘”right”.
This was my earliest, and most invaluable training as a storyteller, and is also a really good reason why Suzanne is still my editor thirty years later. And when I wrote my first X-Files fic (Speechless), it was written with Suzanne in mind and really for her eyes only. She had to convince me to actually publish it on the internet, but I’m glad she did. It was an eye-opening, ego-building process for me as a writer, and it allowed me to learn the mechanics of storytelling in ways that cannot be easily taught even in writing seminars. It also opened up entire new avenues of procrastination, which are always welcome.
What else do you write?
I have two novels in various stages of completion. The first is a post-apocalyptic novel (set in the nearing future) that I first began writing in 1986. It is a re-telling of the Ulyssean idyll with a twist: my Ulysses has no idea where home, or Penelope resides, as he has never seen either of them, and is compelled to move through an utterly changed landscape. Ulysses has been bleeding in the front seat of a stolen car since sometime in 2001 and if he can forgive me, I fully intend to finish it (honestly!) someday.
My second novel is a contemporary romantic comedy novel, although I think of it more as a comedy of manners. That novel is actually fairly close to being finished, so I won’t say too much about it, other than the structure of it (beyond the love story) gives me an opportunity to make observations about the modern cult of celebrity and how far it has integrated itself into ‘reality’. I’ve got a bit of work to do on polishing this up, and added a chapter in a place where there was a logic break, but … this one is fairly close to being finished.
Do you have a writing process?
:: wipes tears of laughter from eyes ::
Sadly, no. I am utterly moved by inspiration and lack discipline. When I am in the midst of writing something, I live and act like I’m in a fever. The everyday world seems very far away from me, and I move through my day with the express purpose of getting back home to my desk, and my computer, so I can be back in my story. I become quietly surly when I am kept from my desk by other obligations. I become explicitly surly when I hit a writer’s block. I keep telling myself that if I worked on my fiction a little bit each day it would be better for me, but … it just doesn’t work that way for me yet.
Over the years, you’ve won a number of awards for your XF fanfic. Do you feel like these accolades have inspired you or do you think this has put more pressure on you as a fanfic writer?
I’ve always been really grateful for the recognition that I’ve received in the XF fandom. I believe that the support that I’ve received from fic readers has made me a more confident, and hopefully better, storyteller. Any pressure I’ve felt as a fic writer relates to my own sense of failure over how long it has taken me to get to “Justice”, and the sense of guilt I feel when people (who have been very loyal to me and generous with their praise) express their desire to see the Speechless series finished.
How has the end of the series and the potential for a movie franchise (ha) affected your writing?
I’ll be honest and say that the events of Seasons 8 and 9 were so acutely disappointing to me that it really crushed my inspiration for a long time. I’m one of those fans who wanted to see a resolution to the mytharc that was believable, and I felt like that story just became so completely addled and layered that it was literally non-sense. Plus the image of Mulder and Scully alone against the world, friendless, family-less, resource-less and separated from their child was very distressing to me. Even with the caveat of Mulder believing that there was hope, I felt a distinct sense of despair with the lack of resolution of so many storylines, so many dropped threads. I wrote Ghosts because of that, because I needed some way to rationalize to myself (and for a few of my friends), that Mulder and Scully would rally again, and that they were not friendless and without resources.
As for the mytharc resolution, that is really what the Speechless series was about for me. The first four stories were about establishing the rubric for the resolution: uniting Mulder and Scully in a complete partnership, solidifying their trust in each other, picking up on the urgency of what happened mid-season 6 after the events at El Rico and extending that story a bit further. To me, even now looking back on it, S6 was the time, storyline-wise, to resolve the mytharc. That didn’t preclude new conspiracies, new collaborators, and other outside danger to the world. There was a way to end Mulder and Scully’s role in the X-Files and hand off a new conspiracy (the SuperSoldiers, for example) to new partners.
The Speechless series was never intended to delve into new conspiracies; Justice, in particular, is my theory of just what exactly was going on with the mythology.
You’ve written for other fandoms. What brings you back to the X-Files?
I love Mulder and Scully, plain and simple. And I’m probably drawn back to them because of my unfinished commitment to telling their story, from my own warped perspective.
Which of your own stories is your favourite story and why?
That’s a really tough question, in part because I fear that it will make me sound egotistical and mostly because my first thought was to think of the story that I’m least happy with. In any case,
I really love “Aquinnah” because I got to share my love for Martha’s Vineyard and weave the myths and stories about its creation through Mulder and Scully’s stories — that was very enjoyable for me. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever had a writing experience that was more pleasurable than Aquinnah. The story just poured out of me, once I had assembled all of the bits of story logic in my mind.
However, I think my favorite story works on some of the same levels, but has a quieter, less intense flow to it. From the first idea that I had for Aquinnah, it had this very set structure to it,
a cadence that limited the way the story could be told. It was an experiment of sorts for me, but one that I think paid off well in terms of the end result. Well, mostly. There are a couple of
things that I would change. In my favorite story however, the structure is more straight narrative. Well, as straight as it gets for me, anyway, since I do enjoy taking the long way to tell a story. I also really enjoy mythology in all of its forms — legends, lore, the arcane of dead faiths, but I have a special fondness for fairy tales. For that reason, I love Salt, because it incorporates a beloved book from my own childhood with a story about Mulder and Scully. I also feel that the meter and measure of the story builds really well, that I let the story unfold in such a way that it isn’t until the very end that all of the bits of it become braided together, that you can see the trail of salt that has led Scully to Mulder for what it is. I read that story and it strikes me as well-done.
Anything else you’d like to tell readers out there?
:: takes deep breath ::
I’m working on Justice. In fact, I’m working quite hard on it, but I’m going to be brutally honest and say that it is a huge mess right now. HUGE. I originally began writing the outline of and pieces of Justice before I actually wrote the previous four stories. It was while I was writing the outline for Justice, in which Mulder and Scully are very much a couple, that I realized that I had to get them from Point A to Point M where I was currently. So, I’ve actually got several chapters of text that are from many different perspectives and all of them are written in first person
present tense.
The rest of the Speechless series has been written in third person omniscient, roughly. Well, mostly. Anyway, I think it’s fixable, and I’ve decided to really focus on fixing it and posting it, as a WIP, on my fic Live Journal, which can be found at http://anjoufic.livejournal.com. I actually posted my only Veronica Mars story there as a WIP [Into the Blue] last summer, and it was a good experience for me. I’m hoping this one will be as well. I’ll post at the Haven when I’m ready to go live with the first installment of the story, but it will be a little while. I want to get a good
chunk of it fixed up before I start the process of posting. Once it’s all finished and the rough edges are smoothed away, I’ll post it to the more traditional venues, and ask dtg to post it on the website that she’s generously hosted for Bonetree, Jean Robinson, Jill Selby, Sarah Segretti and myself for the past couple of years, which we call The Cave.
Well, that’s it for me, and if you got all of the way to the end, thanks so much for reading!
And thank you, Circe Invidiosa, for being such a pleasant hostess, and for all of the great work that you’re doing showcasing the talented writers in the X-Files community. It’s really wonderful to see that the fandom is still here and is vibrant, if smaller, in the past few years. I very much appreciate being included.
[If you’re a Veronica Mars fan, then please go and read Anjou’s fic Into the Blue! It’s the best VM fic I’ve read to date.Yes, I know, it’s not an XF rec, but it’s my site, and I’m allowed to take liberties, especially for fic this good. – CI]