Winterfest Interview with Lynn Wright
| Interviews by Fans | |
|---|---|
| Title: | Winterfest Interview with Lynn Wright |
| Interviewer: | Winterfest |
| Interviewee: | Lynn Wright |
| Date(s): | 2005 |
| Medium: | online |
| Fandom(s): | Beauty and the Beast |
| External Links: | Interview with Lynn Wright, Archived version |
| Click here for related articles on Fanlore. | |
In 2005, Lynn Wright was interviewed for Winterfest.
See Winterfest Interview Series.
Some Excerpts
I missed the original series completely. I’m not a big TV watcher, I lean more to movies. I have collected about a thousand films on tapes which are now obsolescent, so I’ve begun on DVD’s. I discovered B&B through an interest in Ron Perlman. Inquiry into his work soon turned up B&B, so I scoured the tape stores until I found the one with “Once Upon a Time…” and “A Happy life”. By the time I’d seen both of them, I was solidly hooked. What can I say? I’m a romantic at heart.
I don’t know why I felt the need to write fiction about B&B. But it was just about the first thing I did after I’d discovered CABB and my dear friend Terrie Milliman, who encouraged me. Also, there was an unfinished Round Robin story on CABB at that time, about Josiah and Elizabeth. It wasn’t getting finished, and that drove me nuts, so I inquired of Terrie whether it would be all right if I tried a chapter. She said sure, and I did, although at that time I had never seen one minute of Magnificent Seven. But she thought it was true enough to the series that she put it up anyhow. The completed series of the Round Robin is now on The Steam Tunnels.
I will never post a work in progress again. The pressure to finish is punishing. And I very much prefer not to post anything of anyone else’s that’s not finished on TST or TT either. There are too many reasons why a story could be left unfinished. I don’t want to leave the fans hanging.
Love scenes. They’re VERY hard to write, for me. I’ll tell you how I do it, although I may be exposing myself to ridicule here.I’ll get my characters up to the point of going to bed. Then I sit for a while and sweat blood trying to think of something to say about it. Finally I just shut my eyes and start typing. Shutting the eyes is a very important part of it. I don’t think about what I’m saying at all, I just let it flow. Then when it’s done, when they’re all through and ready to go to sleep, I go back through it in a more rational manner, and edit it until I’ve got something that is more or less satisfactory. I don’t know why it works, maybe my subconscious is sexier that my conscious mind, but that’s how I mostly do it.
I find also that it’s very hard to write anything about sex that’s even partly original. There’s been such a lot this stuff written for V&C that it’s all been pretty much said.
The Steam Tunnels was Terrie Milliman’s idea. We used to laugh about the fact that she had these great ideas, and that her special talent was getting other people to do them. This was a case in point. Terrie didn’t like to post stories that were too adult on TT, she thought since it was a family site it should have some restrictions. Well, I wanted to write adult things, so she suggested I start a new site for just adult stories. She also suggested the name. Terrie was full of ideas.I gathered the work mostly by asking I guess. Of course, Teri’ stories are the mainstay of TST, and Teri was very happy to have a place to put her more adult things. Then some other people wrote and offered, and I was happy to post things that I thought showed some talent, and some appreciation for the fact that writing adult love scenes can be either pornographic or funny, or sometimes both, if some skill isn’t available to the writer. That’s why I’ve put up a notice that I don’t accept everything offered to TST.
I’m the sole judge of what goes up on it. I guess that’s not very democratic, but I have strong feelings about what’s suitable, and since I own the site I’m the one that gets to choose.
Pencil. I guess because it’s easy. Colored pencils, which are the medium I use for color work, are much more difficult. They look best, I believe, on a black background, and that means that every millimeter must be covered with color. That’s a far cry from sketching with a pencil, when a line or two will give the impression wanted. In the past I have sold highly detailed water colors, mostly of wildlife, but that’s a very difficult and time consuming medium, and I don’t do it any more... [My pencil sketches don't take] very long. I should take this opportunity to tell everyone that I’m not as good as it looks. I usually find a picture that I want to do, print it the size I want to do it, then put it on the light table and trace out the main lines: eyes, nose& mouth position, and a few lines for hair or jaw or shoulders. With that to go on, I don’t have to spend a lot of time getting the proportions correct. And when I do love scenes, I always have a photo to go by. I’m not skilled enough to make up bodies. I’m getting pretty skilled at cutting and pasting pictures to get the bodies into the right position, though! And anyone who looked at my usage history on the net would wonder if I’m some kind of pervert. I’ve got quite a library of nude and partially nude figures.
My friends and family know [I'm a BatB fan]. I’m I little hesitant to tell new people about it. They do tend to think you’re nuts. My daughter can’t stand the whole idea. She’s not a romantic. She says, “Mom! He’s an animal! Ugh!” There’s no point in talking to her about it, so I don’t.
[Regarding her steamy fic and the possible need for a cold shower]: Remember, I’m 71 years old. But I hope that my writings and artwork are raising water usage in many parts of the world. That’s what the purpose is, isn’t it? Yes, I chuckle. And I still like to read this stuff, so I guess I’m not dead yet.