1. What shall we call you? Caroline is fine.
2. How long have you been writing L&C fanfic? I think I started posting my first story in April of 2006.
3. Have you ever written fic for other shows? I've written for several other fandoms, but they weren't all television fandoms. I started writing in the MASH fandom, moved to Harry Potter, and have written one-shots/vignettes for several other books or shows.
4. Current stories you're working on? I'm not working on anything at the moment.
5. Your first fic? Ever? A MASH story called "A Time for Peace." Here? "If I Were You."
6. Piece of work you're proudest of? Oh, goodness. I have no idea. I generally try not to go back and look at stuff I've written before because it always sends me into fits of wishing I'd done things differently. I don't know that I have a story I'm "proudest" of. I have stories I'm particularly fond of, but that tends to have to do with the way I felt when I wrote them rather than with the actual finished product.
That said, I do have a special place in my heart for each of the "first" stories I've written in any fandom. There's something so exciting about diving into a new set of characters, getting to know them, getting the feel for their dialogue and discovering things about them that I didn't even know I knew. Even if I get a few things wrong, I enjoy that "new romance" feeling of writing in a new fandom.
7. Piece of work you had the hardest time writing/finishing? One of my HP stories. It's the only story I've ever left unfinished, and I loathe it with an absolute passion.
As far as this fandom goes, I recall that I hit a snag somewhere in the middle of "Stardust" and flailed around a bit fretting over various things before I finally just decided to get on with finishing it. But it was probably my most troublesome L&C story.
8. Your greatest strengths as an author? No idea! I just write what happens in my head and hope someone else finds it as interesting as I do.
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9. Your biggest weaknesses? I don't plot well. It's one reason I stay away from complicated A-plots. I tend to write by the seat of my pants, and that's not conducive to intricate plotting.
10. Preferred genre(s) to write? Romance, WAFF, humor. I'm a lightweight
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11. Genre(s) you won't write? Darkfic, unrelieved angst - basically anything that depresses me. I read those sorts of stories and even find them cathartic sometimes, but I spend exponentially more time writing a story than I'd spend reading one, and I don't want to immerse myself to that extent in a world that bums me out.
I also dislike writing nfic because I find it so tedious trying to navigate the minefield of "insert tab A into slot B" mechanics and, at the other end of the spectrum, romance novel cliches. I really admire authors who can do that well, but I don't think I'm one of them.
12. What makes a fic good for you? Characterization, characterization, characterization. Obviously, good writing, too, but if the characterization is a miss - if I don't feel that I recognize the characters as the ones I know and love from canon - then even brilliant writing won't make me stick with the story.
In general, I like stories that feel like a logical extrapolation from canon. I like stories that leave me feeling good, even if they serve up a dose of angst along the way.
13. What ruins a fic for you? Well, bad characterization - see above. But also bad grammar, spelling, etc. will make me shut a file pretty quickly. Not so much an issue in this fandom, but it certainly is in others.
And it might be too strong to say that it "ruins" a fic for me, because there are always exceptions, but I don't have much interest in Next Gen fics in this fandom, and the words "New Krypton" tend to send me running in another direction. I hated that arc so much that I'd really just prefer to pretend it never happened.
14. Author you wish you could trade places with? Oh, I wouldn't trade places with anyone. Then I wouldn't have had the fun of writing my own stories, and writing them has brought me a tremendous amount of pleasure.
However, there are authors here I admire immensely, many of whom influenced my own take on the characters back in the days when I was a lurker and reader: CC Aiken, Kathy Brown, LabRat, Lynn M., Meredith Knight, Yvonne Connell... and I know there are more who just aren't coming to mind right now. I came to the fandom via the stories rather than the show, so the authors on the archive were really the ones who hooked me and showed me the characters' potential.
15. The best fic you've read recently? While doing some Kerth reading, I wound up re-reading all of C_A's lovely vignettes. I don't know that I could pick a favorite among them, but she has a way with words - and a way of packing
so much into just a few perfectly chosen words - that I admire tremendously.
