Fatalist

11th January, 2001

I don't mean to be complaining Lord, you've always seen me through
and I know You've got Your reasons for each and every thing You do
but tonight outside my window, there's a lonesome mournful sound
and I just can't keep from thinking 'bout the ones the wolves pulled down . . .
My creativity I think is best compared, however Pythonesque, to a menstrual cycle. Over an extended period of time, inspiration builds up, then it all comes gushing out on paper in a burst of activity, my fingers literally flying over the keyboard.
Writing – the words – used to come so naturally. I could sit in a corner with a pen in hand and they'd just come, as if it weren't me really writing at all, I was just a medium for the words to write themselves. There wasn't a day went by without my pen touching paper for the simple joy of continuing on from where I'd left off the day before. That's the way it was for me when I first started writing hanfic online. It took me a week to write a 12 page chapter of CYEBDS, calmly writing in the same way I always had, during lunch-times at school and whenever the whim took me at home.

Is my unconscious trying to tell me something that now when I sit down to write my brain literally recoils from having to touch the keys? That when I pick up a pen, my first reaction is to sigh?

I've racked my brains for months trying to work out what it is that's keeping me from finding in writing the simple pleasure that first induced me to interpret my imagination on paper. And I think I've found an answer – not the answer mind you, but an answer all the same. It's really been a collective process, a sum if you will of things that I've done, have bothered me, and have made my aesthetic heart soar.

The first is the simple fact that for the last three years, I've written nothing but hanfic. No other independent idea or character has been allowed as much as a glance in. This very simple, so-bloody-obvious-you-can't-help-but-miss-it fact came to my attention when I was considering what to send in to my local university as a basis for getting into their Creative Writing degree. I had nothing even worth glancing at but hanfic. And to be honest, that scared me. I could just imagine the looks (and grades!) I'd get turning in a 600 page hanfic novel for my finals!

Which led to the next epiphany, of why I can barely stand to look at my own stories now. Essentially, they're all the same. Sure, they deal with different issues and such, but characterisation has always been a huge part of writing for me, it's what I love most and it's what I do best. No matter how good your imagination is, there are only so many realistic interpretations of Isaac, Taylor and Zac that one can create. I've lost most of my former interest in reading hanfic because I just can't help getting the feeling that I've seen it all before. In my eyes, nothing compares to those early stories.
I volunteered to be on the judging panel for the 2nd Annual Literary Hanfic Awards largely because I knew I was out of touch with the hanfic world as it stands today. I've seen so many stories nominated, and I can look at them objectively judging purely on literary merit, yet subjectively – in my heart – none of them have touched me the way 'Walls' did, none have made me smile the way 'For What It's Worth' did, none have got the pages scrolling down as fast as 'Zac Says Tay Still Wets The Bed' did. Am I too set in my views? Even three years on, these stories are still among the giants of hanfic, am I expecting too much that new stories be just as good, if not better? Maybe I am, but I'm not speaking for the whole of Hanson fandom – I certainly don't have the right to – I can only speak for myself.

I finished CYEBDS two years ago to the day. In two years, on only one other story have I lavished as much love and care and devotion as I did to the story that still remains my best-known work. The one other story was written at the end of 2000, only a few days away from Christmas. That story is called 'Journey Of The Magi', based on a poem by T. S. Eliot, itself based on the Gospels' rendering of the birth of Christ.

CYEBDS, amazingly enough, was my first hanfic – into it I poured years of daydreaming and experience. The characters had been developed and shaped over and over in my head ever since I was young, but writing them then somehow made them fresh and new, something I could legitimately get excited about. 'Journey Of The Magi' is almost purely a straight work of fiction – over the three important characters I overlaid, through habit more than design, three familiar names and with them familiar character traits. The traits we're all familiar with, things that no hanfic author can escape, even if it's only as far as Taylor's androgynous beauty, Zac's aloof eyes or Isaac's amply-described hands.

As terrified of change as I may be, it's something that my writing just can't live without. Isaac, Taylor and Zac for me have become little more than stock characters, to plonk in the middle of a scene and stage an entire story around. No matter how much one moves or changes the props or the supporting cast, you're still left with the three stock characters you started with. Rigid. Immoveable. Stagnant.

I honestly think that I've taken Isaac, Taylor and Zac as far as I possibly can. There's just no changing them anymore. With a character like Rhiannon, I can take her and change her anyway I like. Or I could create a new character to take her place. Because she's mine. Isaac, Taylor and Zac aren't mine, and they never will be. They're real people, and no matter how many times an author will tell you their Hanson are in no way representative of the real Hanson, really that's not true. The characters an author writes may not be the way they see Isaac, Taylor and/or Zac to be, but somewhere in their imagination is a justification, a tiny inkling, perhaps a word or a look or a gesture, that suggests they could be like this. And let's face it, an audience will judge an author's portrayal of Hanson in comparison to the real Hanson and how they see them. There's no excitement left for me in writing about Hanson anymore, because I feel I've taken or am taking them in unfinished stories in every direction my imagination sees as realistically possible.

This is not a goodbye letter. I'll still continue to write the occasional short hanfic story whilst finishing everything that I've started (which knowing me will probably take another two years!). I just can't see where else I can go from here. You never know, I may just be getting pre-creativity cramps that are making me all fatalistic. But I guess what I'm trying to say is don't expect too much more hanfic. I'm not sixteen anymore and I've been recreating Hanson over and over for three years; it's about time I found something else to write about.

Loev to you all,

– Lauryn Beaufort


oh Lord keep me from being the one the wolves pull down . . .

(musical credit – 'The Wolves', Garth Brooks)

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