Every time I start to think that the hanfic world is really small, I need only to start working on these spotlights to be reminded that it really isn’t. That’s because I’m always remembering authors I haven’t featured yet and wondering how I’ve forgotten them. This month’s spotlight, then, is on the wildly popular author Ali who I feel more than a little silly for not featuring yet.
You can read Ali’s stories in a few places. Her Zaylor stories are posted on her LiveJournal, here, while her other slash stories are posted in their own community, here. She has also posted one of her most popular stories, SNAFU, at AO3.
Why did you start writing hanfic? How long have you been writing?
Technically, I have been writing for about 15 years. I started writing Hanfic back in the late 90’s, but I stopped between 2000-2007. I was on an unintentional “break” from Hanson during that time. They kind of disappeared, and I was busy getting married and moving to another continent, so I wasn’t online every day searching for info on what they were up to and I lost track of them. But after Isaac’s blood clot scare in ’07, I got back into them hardcore. I started reading Hanfic again after I came across a picture on photobucket. It was a Zaylor collage, and someone had written on it “sometimes I feel bad for reading/writing Zaylor… then I remember that they bring it on themselves.” lol I had NO clue what Zaylor or Hancest was, so I looked it up and found the definition in urban dictionary. That led me to chockablock’s story, “As Long As I Come Home To You”. After reading that, I went from being squicked out over Zaylor to being obsessed. I started getting story ideas, and I just felt like I needed to write them down.
I know you’re an Adam Lambert fan, too. How is that fandom different from Hanson?
I wouldn’t say I’m an Adam fan. haha I’m a Tommy Joe Ratliff fan. 😉 But I do dabble a little in the Adam fandom because of that. I think the fandoms are very similar in a lot of ways. The fans are all VERY passionate, a lot of them are very friendly, and a portion of them are batshit cray. I think the main difference I’ve noticed in the Adam fandom (and honestly, it might be more of a difference between LJ and AO3 more than the fandoms), is that the fiction readers in that community are WAY more into the stories they read. They get very excited about them and they tend to leave more in-depth feedback for the authors. It could be because that fandom is still relatively new and they’re all still more passionate about it, whereas Hanson fans are more “over it”. I don’t know, it just feels different.
What are your favorite hanfic stories and authors?
I’m honestly more of a writer than a reader. For some reason I’ve always found it VERY hard to make myself sit down and focus on reading anything, no matter what it is, so my reading experience in the Hanfic community is limited. But I will say that I love the worlds that chockablock’s creates, and the thought and detail she puts into her stories. And I adore drunkinlov3’s sense of humor and the warmth in her stories, it’s like comfort food. And jammyisawesome writes short stories like no one else I know. And when I say short, I mean SHORT. She knows how to convey powerful emotions and imagery in only a handful of words. Something I have yet to come anywhere close to mastering…
What is your writing process like?
Well, first I’ll get a random idea. I’ll seriously just be cooking dinner or something and it’ll inspire a tiny moment in my mind. And I’ll live with it for a while, and it’ll begin spawning more moments and ideas. And then those ideas begin to flesh themselves out into “scenes”, I guess. All this is still in my head, by the way. It takes me forever to get to the point of sitting down and actually trying to put it all into words, because I’m always so afraid that I’ll fail. It’s like watching a movie in my head and then trying to write down what I’m watching so that other people will be able to visualize it, too. It’s fun, but it’s frustrating because I rarely feel like I do a good enough job of describing what I’m seeing. I need a much larger vocabulary. :p
Where do your ideas and inspiration come from?
I have no clue, honestly. Sometimes a song will give me an idea, sometimes my own life and experiences are the jumping off point. I find writing can be helpful in getting out my own emotions and dealing with how I’m feeling. But a lot of the time I’ll just be minding my own business and suddenly I’ll get this dumb idea in my head…
Which stories are you most proud of having written?
There are stories that are very special to me that I’m not “proud” of. Not because I dislike them, but because I don’t feel they’re necessarily my best work. But because those stories brought me closer to people I love, they’ll always be my favorites. Stories like “The Fallout”, and all of the Jammy/Taylor fics.
But the ones I’m actually proud of… it always seems to come back to “What If”, “Paint it Black”, and “Either Side”, for me. I’m proud of how many people I seemed to touch with “Life Less Ordinary”, but somewhere along the line that fic became more of a chore to write, and I’m still waiting to rediscover my passion for it so that I can finally finish writing it.
Favorite songs to listen to while you write or which inspire your writing?
It totally depends on the story I’m writing, and even the exact moment I’m writing within the story. For instance, I was listening to “LAX” and “You Were My Home” by JJAMZ a lot last week while writing. Yesterday I was listening to “In My Veins” by Andrew Belle, which has a different mood from JJAMZ songs entirely. But the chapter I was working on while writing JJAMZ had a different mood, too.
Thank you, Ali, for being the September spotlight! Your writing process sounds a lot like mine. I’m glad I’m not the only one with stories living in my head all the time! 😉