Featured Author: selenewolf
- Details
- Published on Sunday, 19 September 2010 13:37
This month's featured author is selenewolf. She is the author of Your Runaway, Fine and Trapped and Bound.
1. How did you get into fan fiction? Why Robert Pattinson fan fiction?
From I was little I used to make up stories in my head concerning TV shows or films I liked, adding characters and stuff. I was, and still am, a HUGE Buffy fan, so when I found Buffy fanfic on the net I was hooked and started reading it on every series, film etc that I liked.
2. What made you decide to start writing fan fiction?
I’ve always been a writer, writing stories and books for pleasure and one day I just decided to give it a go. Since then I’ve written Buffy, Supernatural and other fanfic...And then came Rob.
3. What is your writing process? Do you have a specific place you like to write, music you listen to, etc.?
I tend to write a lot at night, I seem to get most creative from midnight to three in the morning! I curl up on my bed with a lamp on, a cup of tea and a scented candle lit and type on a lap-top. I always listen to music when I write and have specific playlists for different stories.
4. How much research goes into the stories? Time spent on the internet? Personal experience?
I do a lot of research on locations and things like that. The directions I gave in "Trapped and Bound" to Saoirse's flat in Temple Bar, Dublin are completely accurate as I picked it out while down there one weekend. You could pick out that chapter and walk to it using those instructions! The inside is based on my sisters student dive. In one chapter of my story ‘Your Runaway, Fine’ I had to write a medical examination so I spent a lot of time going through medical books and talking to a friend who is a doctor. I also spend a lot of time watching videos of Rob, listening to his speech, particular words he uses and what gestures he makes and when. For example, he always plays with his hair when he’s nervous. As I’m writing about a real person I want to get it right. For the Rob fics I’ve written, more than any other fics, I’ve also found myself drawing on my own life experience which has been strange, and my own feelings concerning particular incidents in my past. In the middle of writing “Trapped and Bound” I also found out that my dad had cancer and a lot of what I was feeling about that went into that fic.
5. What is the hardest/easiest part about writing?
Easiest is just doing it sometimes. I love those times when it just flows out of you and you can’t type fast enough! Also writing sex scenes about Rob isn’t hard! The hardest part for me these days is getting the time and peace and quiet to do it. I’ve just got a new job and a lot of family have moved back in with us so it’s difficult. When I first started my latest fic I was updating every week, now it’s more like every two weeks, which I get really stressed over as I’m scared I’ll lose my readers. Also when I don’t get to write I get really moody! I often wish I had a hidden bunker I could just lock myself in!
6. Out of the stories you've written which is your favorite? Favorite character? Why?
I love both of my Rob fics, and I also did a Supernatural fic a while ago called “The Dead Kingdom” which I liked because it was about a necromancer and was really gothic and unusual. I loved Saoirse as she was one of those characters I didn’t feel I created, she just appeared in my head and told me what to write (God, I sound so pretentious!) She was so tiny and vulnerable and yet there was a real strength to her. Deep down, she was tough as old boots, and I liked how she was the girl rescuing the boy and looking after him, instead of the other way round.
7. What do you think makes a good story?
An unusual storyline; there are so many ‘Rob meets civilian and falls in love’ stories out there that something different really grabs my eye. Also, when someone is a really talented writer. I have seen so many stories where the idea was good, but the person hadn’t taken the time to plan it or proof-read it afterwards, or it was full of clichés. It drives me nuts!
8. Is there any story (or book) you wish you could have written? Why?
Fanfic-wise I wish I’d written “Master of the Universe” by snowqueensicedragon, a Twilight AU fic that Swoozy got me into. Brilliantly written and darkly erotic, that girl is so talented. Novel-wise I wish I’d written “The Virgin suicides” by Geoffrey Euginides, “Speak” by Laurie Anderson-a book that pretty much saved my life, or “The Merrybegot” by Julie Hearn, which was my favourite book growing up.
9. Do you have any writing tips?
Before you start, always make sure you have a vague idea of the beginning, the middle and the end...That way you won’t get lost. Also, have some chocolate as brain food!
10. Who's your pick to be the next author interviewed? (This person will actually be it.)
RainerNight. Great author and a very cool person.
From readers:
1. Your stories are so vivid and so real, so emotionally intense. What do you draw on to get that intensity? Music? Reading? Movies? And how do you deal with how it leaves you afterwards? There have been times, I admit, where your stories have stayed with me for days. - Swoozy
Music is a huge inspiration for me. “My Skin” by Natalie Merchant is a song I’ve listened to on a loop while writing both “Trapped and Bound” and “Your Runaway, Fine”-Where Rob is also shown singing it and playing it at a piano. It’s a wonderfully raw song that moves me to tears and it makes me feel vulnerable, like my characters. Also, “Damaged” by Poe and “Unfold” by Maria Digby. Pink’s “Sober” was my soundtrack to the breakdown scene in “Trapped and Bound” and “All You Wanted” by Michelle Branch pretty much inspired a lot of the story of “Runaway”, with the line “If you want to I can save you, I can take you away from here. So busy inside, so lonely out there. And all you wanted was somebody who cared.” Michelle was my inspiration for Jaz.
As for how it leaves me afterwards...Well, in both these stories more than anything else I’ve ever written I’ve drawn on personal experience and it has been hard. Afterwards I do sometimes feel incredibly raw, I ended up sitting shaking after writing some scenes...But it’s also extremely cathartic as I can give voice to feelings and thoughts I’ve never addressed before. In “Trapped and Bound” as Rob started to get better I felt better. Usually I have to go and find something happy to do, like watch The Simpsons! My family have also get a lot more random hugs when I’m writing! The messages I got from people for that fic, all the PM’s and e-mails, also helped immeasurably as they told me I wasn’t alone.
2. What is the most important thing you have learned about writing that you would like to share with the other writers here? - m244robp
That it is the most wonderful form of self-expression out there and everyone should give it a go. I’ve met some amazing people through it, it’s been great therapy and it has also been so much fun!
3. How would you react if you actually had a chance to meet Rob? (this is a Rob-related site, right?) - m244robp
I’d like to think I’d be cool and sophisticated...But somehow I doubt that. I’d probably freeze, say something moronic and run away.
4. What made you like Robert? Do you write Robert different then everyone else? and what is you favorite Robert story that you didnt write? - queens_of_pattinson
Obviously Rob is incredibly beautiful, but he is also really humble and genuinely seems like a lovely person. I was drawn to the fact that he’s quite deep, he’s a talented musician and very into literature. He also, like me, is a big Van Morrison fan! But there’s also an innocence to him, a vulnerability, that interested me. He’s very ‘Human’, not starry at all. I find myself feeling quite protective of him! That’s why, when my friend Ruth dared me to write “Trapped and Bound”, my first Rob fic, I decided to take up the challenge. As for writing him differently, I think we all write him differently as none of us know him. However, a friend I met on this site who also reads my fics, told me that my Rob was different in that I allow him to have his bad habits. He drinks and he smokes without getting told off for it by any characters and without ever having an “OMG this is bad for me” type of awakening and stopping. I’d never even thought of that before, but I think that’s because I’m from the U.K and Rob is a very typical example of a twenty-something man from here, in that respect. I don’t think his bad habits make him a bad person and I wanted to represent him accurately, so the cigarettes stay!
Favorites:
- Book: Oh crap, there are so many! ‘Wuthering Heights” (Oh, Heathcliff! I’d love it if Rob played him!) ‘Interview with The Vampire”, “The Virgin Suicides”, “Speak” and I’m also a huge fan of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series.
- Movie: It changes all the time.
- Actor/Actress: Rob, of course. My favourite actress is an English actress called Sarah Smart; I think she’s incredibly talented.
- Band: Florence and the Machine at the moment, but it changes all the time.
- Song: “Round Here” by Counting Crows. The imagery in it is just breath-taking. It’s poetry.
- Cookie: Jammy Dodgers
Last Words: Oh, this is where I say something deep, o.k... “Dream big, it’s the cheapest thing you’ll ever do.”
Is there anything else you would like to say or share with us?
I just want to say thank-you. Thank you to all the mods and the webmaster for creating such a brilliant site. I remember sighing with relief when I found it. And thank you sooooooooooooo much to all the people who read and comment on my fics. Their comments mean so much to me and they were all so wonderful when I had some pretty scary RL dramas. They are amazing people!
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