This interview was first posted in Oct 2006.
We’re pleased to present our feature author, Punk Maneuverability. She’s known to multiple fandoms and moves effortlessly between them. X-Files fans were lucky enough to be able to start reading her award winning stories in 1997 – and she’s still going strong. You can find all of Punk’s stories on her webpage: The Underground.
When did you start writing XF fanfic? How did you start?
I started writing XF fanfic back in the dark ages of 1997. It was February. Me and my 2400 baud modem were away at college when I got the flu. With nothing else to do in my dorm room, I spontaneously (sort of) discovered fandom. I got on the newsgroups — atx and atxc — and soon after that I posted my first fic. It was fluffy and schmoopy and badly out of character, but everyone was very supportive and I kept writing and I got better at it. I’d always considered myself a writer, but for the first time I felt like I was getting somewhere with it because I actually had people reading my stuff. People who didn’t even know me!
What else do you write? What other fandoms are you involved in?
I drifted away from XF while the show was in its 7th or 8th season, drifted through Sports Night (where I discovered a love of m/m slash) and West Wing; I found a more permanent home with Smallville, where I stayed for a few years before picking up Due South and Stargate Atlantis. I write fic for all of those, and while I consider Smallville and Stargate Atlantis to be my main fandoms now, I know I’ll never leave XF behind. It was my first fandom. I still have a lot of ideas for XF fics. Hell, I just posted a big (for me!) plotty Mulder/Scully bodyswap, “Flea Market Economy.”
Do you have a writing process? Do you outline and plan out the entire story before you begins to write, or does you make it up along the way?
I used to just make it up as I went along, which was fine when mostly what I wrote were vignettes or short fics that took place in one scene. When I started writing in other fandoms, I started getting more plot-oriented and actually had my characters moving from place to place, sometimes over the course of days! This, of course, made things more complicated and I found myself planning ahead and shuffling around scenes to better fit my idea of what the fic should be. So, these days, when I write, I tend towards longer pieces with actual plots and stuff, and I’ve found having a rough outline really helps. My latest thing is to write scenes down on index cards, one scene per card, that way I can easily move them around and add blank cards in where I know I need an extra scene, but don’t know what it is yet.
How has the end of the series and the potential for a movie franchise affected your writing?
With a few exceptions, I’ve always written my XF fics as happening sort of outside the canon timeline. So I have to say the show itself never really interfered in my writing. *g* I totally don’t agree with the way the Samantha arc was ended, and that actually did throw a wrench into the big Samantha story I was planning, but I figure Chris Carter changed his mind so many times that I’m allowed to pick and choose which parts of canon to take seriously at any given moment. My main concern is getting the characters right. Mulder and Scully did change over the years, and I try to be true to that more than any specific moment in canon. I’ll mentally set a story in a general time, like “sort of in season four” or “post cancer” or “right around ‘Chinga,'” more to set the tone of the Mulder/Scully relationship than anything.
Has the end of the series affected your level of participation in the fandom?
My participation was already trailing off around that time, but not necessarily because the show was ending. I’m fine with writing for a show that’s off the air. It’s freeing in a way because you know nothing new is going to happen and screw up the story you’re working on. *g*
Do you have any upcoming stories or projects to look out for?
Not at the moment! They just pop up and blindside me, so I’m really the last to know. I still have a lot of unfinished stories sitting around, and I get them out and stare at them and either change a word or two and then close them again, or suddenly find myself adding entire paragraphs and plotting out new scenes for them. I’d been staring lovingly at the beginning of that bodyswap for years, and one day I just snapped and decided to finish it. I never throw anything away and XF’s going to be with me for a long time.
Punk