How long have you been in fanfic?

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Interviews by Fans
Title: How long have you been in fanfic?
Interviewer: Mirage
Interviewee: the members of alt.startrek.creative
Date(s): December 17, 1998
Medium: online
Fandom(s): Star Trek discussion group
External Links: How long have you been in fanfic?, Archived version
Click here for related articles on Fanlore.

In 1998, a fan asked fellow list members at alt.startrek.creative the question "How long have you been in fanfic?"

The Post

Well, I was checking all the creative newsgroups and it started me thinking about how my fanfic interests have grown. I came across a.s.c. 3 or 4 years ago, lurked for awhile, moved over to atxc, read it religiously for 2 years and now I'm reading asc again. I'm just wondering about my fellow asc readers - how long have you been reading or writing trek fanfic? -Mirage.

Some of the Responses

  • "Started writing fanfic in February 97. Started reading in March when I went online (although sporadically). Didn't get to ASC till June 98. Same for ATXC. I now have *way* too much fanfic stored on my hard drive ;)" -- TrexPhile
  • "I got my computer about one-and-one-half years ago, and discovered ASC shortly thereafter. After a couple of months of reading, I was motivated to start writing myself. Mind you, this was after more than twenty years of carrying stuff around in my head, and *never* committing anything to paper. So, in a very real and true sense, this group was liberation for me, and I'm very grateful. I'm enjoying myself hugely 'just' writing Trekfic (So *there*, Mr. Ordover!), but I do entertain ideas of going pro one day." -- Mike Hollihan
  • "Okay I will be brave enough to answer that..... I started writing fanfiction (and very bad as I look back on it) about... Wow.... thirty-three years ago...... and this year ( as some of you already know) is the first time I have ever had a reader for them. It is totally satisfying to have someone else read the words that you have put down and for them to understand...." -- Gayle
  • "I believe I stumbled into the world of fanfic in the fall of 1992, starting with ASC actually. I occasionally lurked into other genres of media fiction (like X-Files, X-Men, anime, and even ReBoot fanfic) up until the spring of 95, when I started writing Trek fanfic (geez, has it really been 3-1/2 years???) I haven't wandered out of this newsgroup since." -- Darrel W. Beach
  • "I think I've been engaged in fanfic of one sort or another ever since I can remember. When I was little, I used to write the "next chapter" in fairy tales, what happened to constitute the "happily ever after." I couldn't leave the end of the story alone; it wasn't in me to do that. When I was in grade school, it was Wonder Woman stories. I'd make them up in my head, put a scene or two on paper, and "direct" episodes starring my friends and myself. After that, it was "Dukes of Hazzard" (and an eerie premonition of Trekfic to come when Jonathan Frakes captivated me with his guest role as Jamie Lee Hogg.) When Next Gen finally came around, fanfic was as natural as breathing. Shoot me if you must, but I never could grasp Riker/Troi as a romantic couple, so my warped little brain had to go searching for other partners. I hit on Worf/Troi before I saw it on the show, and created an original love interest for Riker, one I'm still writing, even though I rarely watch Paramount Trek anymore. Yes, Mr Ordover, I do plan on becoming a professional writer, and fanfic is teaching me many things I need to do that. <g> When my partner and I write Tapestry Saga stories, some of them are nowhere near and little or nothing to do with Starfleet events. It's become a world of its own. Speaking of which, I gots me some itchy fingers...better go write!" -- Anna
  • "And I have been reading his stuff since I was 14 in 1984. :-) I only started writing about 2 years ago, starting on the Kung Fu:TLC list. I used to write stories in grade school too; but they were new versions of Phyllis Whitney's young adult mysteries.. you know, the ones where a girl is visiting France (or name your foreign city here) and gets involved in the mystery, a handsome French (or again, name your city here) guy, and saves the day after getting captured by the bad guys. :-)" -- Sharron
  • "I've been writing for [Play-by-post role-playing game|PBEM sims] for almost a a year and a half, and I've been lurking here off and on for the same amount of time. I'm probably going get my first story to A.S.C. out this X-mas break. I've got some ideas, I just need to get them onto paper." -- J'myle K.
  • "I've been writing fan fict off and on all my life, when a show/movie/book didn't go the way I wanted to or when I had an idea of an original story. I began writing TNG fan fict in 1990, then went to my first con in the Spring of '91 and discovered Orion Press, and all the other people who wrote also. I've found ASC through a friend when I went online last year, as well as exploring other websites with fan fic." -- Louise
  • "I guess you could say my earliest fanfic was really role playing. Back in the 1960's (oh jeez has it been that long) we would run around the neighborhood talking into our fountainpens and pretending we worked for U.N.C.L.E. From that it was a natural to move on to Star Trek. (It would have been sooner but the show hadn't aired yet.) We all took on a Star Trek persona and made log entries instead of notes during class. Then we would slip them into each others lockers. (Hey it was Junior High.) After Junior High we moved and I was introduced to Real Life. The stories stopped. Fanfic was pretty much an unknown commodity here in Toadsuck. We didn't even get a local con until the late 70's and by then fanfic wasn't something "adults" did. Then in the late 80's, out of boredom and in response to the ending of Remington Steele, I pulled out a spiral bound notebook and started to write fanfic for that. I think I finished three stories and the notebook is probably around here somewhere if I haven't burned it. Trust me, those stories were never intended to see the light of day and I still didn't have a clue that fanfic existed.... In December of '96 a miracle happened. We actually got connected to the Internet. One of the first places I found as ASC. "Oh brave new world." What an introduction, the group was getting geared up for the annual years best voting. There were stories galore. I downloaded and lurked and lurked and downloaded for six months. It wasn't until the summer of 97 when a challenge was issued concerning Star Trek and musicals that I actually pulled out a notebook and attempted some of my own. I did finish it, but to the best of my knowledge, no one else answered the challenge, so I never posted mine. It languished there on my hard drive until February of 1998. ASC was in the middle of voting again and while there were lots of stories, there was no P/C. Can you believe it, we allowed Valentines Day to pass WITHOUT ANY P/C! So, I pulled the story out of the hard drive, reread it and nearly went into a diabetic coma. Rogers and Hammerstein and Picard and Crusher. It was just too sweet. I had to post it. Okay, now for the Cliff Notes version. Started reading fanfic December 1996. Wrote first story summer of 97. Posted first story February of 98." -- zoinky
  • "I've been reading and writing fanfic for a little over a year. The first story I read was back May of 97 called Rest and Relaxation by Kris, and I was hooked. A wrote my first P/T fanfic in December of that year. I enjoy reading the stories as much as writing them. I love it when I come across a new story to read." -- Marleena
  • "Does anyone else remember Stingray, Thunderbirds, Fireball XL5 or dare I mention Supercar? (Tried my hand at a few of those too!) My interest in Star Trek and all things sci-fi came about from a life long desire to be an astronaut... I have conceded to the fact that in this life I will only be writing about it..... BUT for my next life I have much better plans!" -- Gayle
  • "Personally, I've been writing graphic slash since I was 12. That's 11 years. I started out on K/S, and I wrote it until 2.5 years ago. I had no access to other fanfic authors until I discovered the net, my first year in University 3 years ago. I found the Star Trek Slash Archive and discovered G/B, and have been crazy about them ever since." -- Mark
  • "Stress brought me to ASC in February, 98, started to write a month later. Turns out my first story became a 77 page piece of fanfic, but I've never been short on words :-) " -- AMB Ricardo
  • "Well, let's see. I wrote my first piece of fanfic in November 1997...so just over a year. Man that's gone fast." -- Marion
  • "It's been about 2 years for me. I first started lurking on alt.fan.q a couple of weeks before Alara posted chapter 3 of "Only Human" and, from there, found my way to ASC. I posted my first story in April of '97." -- Laura Taylor
  • "I invented K/S in the early '80s when I was in junior high school. I didn't realize it had been invented before. <G> Seriously--I've been writing fanfic since around the time of the last Blish novelization, in my childhood. Discovered a.s.c. because someone somewhere on the net told me about Christine Faltz's "Oh Captain My Captain" and I had to see it for myself. I hadn't written any fanfic as an adult before then, but it didn't take long..." -- Michelle
  • "Me- as a reader since the early 80's, as a writer just over a month-and-a-half. As far as ASC goes, it's been a godsend, both for allowing me to share my work with others, and to satisfy my hunger for new stories (I've pretty much given up on the pro novels at this point). Not just the group, either, as I've really started digging through the ASC archive." -- Kevin J
  • "I didn't know fanfic existed until 1994 or 95 when I encountered a wonderful novel called 'Silence' by Kellie Matthews-Simmons. It was the first fanfic I ever read and I still think it one of the best things ever done. I then mounted a search for more fanfic and found the old site run by Joseph Young. I nearly went broke paying telephone charges. Lots of fun." -- weecat
  • "Oh my... this question just made me realize i'm getting close to two years of writing now... man time flys. It doesn't seem that long ago I posted my first part of a story and waited a whole day in utter terror to check my e-mail to see if anyone might have possibly looked at it. As for reading... I stumbled across ASCE first about three and a half years ago... first reaction was 'ewwww... startrek and sex in the same thought' while I clicked on those nice alt.sex.stories groups. Obviously I got over that... about 10 seconds after reading my first slash story. Took a little longer and a lot of passing those "naughty" stories around with my buds... and voila the birth of a slash writer. (Anyone who takes offense to my calling the stories 'naughty' please understand I was only just 17 at the time and we were usually in bio class... i'd never call them naughty now.)" -- Terabithia
  • "Ever since I watched ST in the '60's, I've been scribbling down story ideas but never managed to truly complete the stories. Through a magazine called Trek, back in 1980, Lynn Syck and I met as pen-pals (she lives in Florida and I live an Okla). We both discovered the wonderful world of zines in 1982, in Houston where we met for the first time, at the infamous con, The Ultimate Fantasy (which it was not). There at the con, the zine editor for Vault of Tomorrow (Marion McChesney) accepted her story called Leave-Takings. From there, she and another pen-pal, Laurel Ridener from Ohio, had over thirty stories published in various zines (Mind Meld, Contact, VOT, Whalesong, Galactic Discourse, Lonestar Trek, and Tantulus). I did not get brave enough to submit a story until 1985, but from there Lynn and I have had several stories in zines although mine tend to be much longer than Laurel's and Lynn's so we have fewer stories. And about fan fiction, we both had our first true initiation in fan fiction at that con and I don't think we've gotten over it yet. There was the first time we read Spock enslaved. And got our first taste of a beautiful story by Bev Volker and Nancy Kippax, called "Home is the Hunter", sigh--wonderful Kirk h/c and great triad interaction. There were long nights in Houston in '82, and every other con we've gone to since of staying up most of the night and reading the fiction to one another. Impossible to explain to the mundanes out there how much fun we have. A TOS story we try to bring and read aloud whenever possible is "Rumor has it" from "Nome" and can barely get through it each time because it is so very well written and so incredibly funny. I think I'm more of a zine person, but I have also enjoyed the advantages of the ST creative newsgroup. Although, it is frustrating that I have three different stories, I'm working on right now and would like feedback but since they are already promised to zines, I cannot post them. The feedback that one gets from everyone here is tremendously helpful--and I know for a fact that Betrayed was a stronger, better story after the helpful comments I received on the first posting. Now, it's frustrating that I cannot share the finished product with the ones who helped make it better. Was this limited to 3 lines? As Lynn often sighs and tells me, "Mary, you don't know the meaning of 'short story'. LL&P" -- Mary Rottler
  • "I began reading fanzines in 1985 when I found organized Trek fandom. I got online in early 1997 and found ASC after only a few weeks. I posted my first story in April of 97. Now I mostly post over on ASCEM, but I still lurk around here too. :-)" -- AKite68163
  • "hehe, Here's my Fanfic Story... Back in 1986-87, when i was 11 years old, I was a fan of the kids cartoon show, "Silverhawks" I got into it so much that my pictures of the characters soon became illustrated stories. I put myself in the story, as a futuristic space doctor. My brother and my Afghan Hound Buffy were my crew. Then, in 1987, the stories changed when I discovered "Star Trek" The Spaceship turned into a Starfleet one, and we wore TNG uniforms. I also added an Andorian Crewmember, and Buffy started to walk on two legs in a dress. Other things started to go into the mix. "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy, "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles"... As the years progressed, my drawing ability and my storytelling ability became more and more complex. In 1996, I eschewed 5-subject notebooks entirely when I purchased my computer, and wrote my stories in novel form. I didn't know it then, but I had become a full-blown Fanfic writer." -- BubuBORG
  • "I'm part of the ASC class of '93 having discovered ASC in November of that year, posting Enterprized shortly there after. Someone recently accused me of being the "Old Man of the Newsgroup." At 24, I kinda hope not, so please tell me that some of you have been around longer (I know most of you are older)" -- Stephen Ratliff
  • "I wrote a Star Wars novel (complete with illustrations in colored pencil) when I was 10. It centered around Han Solo, an attack on Corellia, and a long-lost brother of Princess Leia's who'd been shanghaied into the Storm Troopers (Star Wars was still in the theatres when I started this thing.). It petered out around page 120. By that time I'd gotten into multiple crossover hell and had completely lost whatever plot I'd started out with. Oh, well. I still have it. It's a fun read whenever I come across down in my Mom's cellar. I seem to recall some Battlestar Galactica attempts (now lost) but eventually abandoned all that for sword and sorcery and a scifi novel. I only got back into writing fanfic about a year ago (when I came up with some Bashir stories), and didn't really get around to finishing anything until someone told me about this newsgroup. I always write a lot faster whenever I think that somebody might actually want to read the story at some point." -- Paula

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