Lynn Abbey Quotes

• A good short-story writer has an instinct for sketching in just enough background to ground the specific story.

  Lynn Abbey

  Writing, Intuition, Stories

  25 Copy quote

• During the many centuries that magic, here on this planet, was presumed to have worked, there were at least as many theories as to how magic worked as there were cultures and religions.

  Lynn Abbey

  Magic, Culture, Literature

  14 Copy quote

• Ideas aren't magical; the only tricky part is holding on to one long enough to get it written down.

  Lynn Abbey

  Ideas, Long, Magic

  44 Copy quote

• I'm a writer first and an editor second... or maybe third or even fourth. Successful editing requires a very specific set of skills, and I don't claim to have all of them at my command.

  Lynn Abbey

  Successful, Editing, Editors

  34 Copy quote

• I've read short stories that are as dense as a 19th century novel and novels that really are short stories filled with a lot of helium.

  Lynn Abbey

  Writing, Literature, Stories

  84 Copy quote

• It's possible to become so comfortable with one's style and structure that one ceases to grow.

  Lynn Abbey

  Style, Literature, Structure

  4 Copy quote

• There is nothing that compares to an unexpected round of applause.

  Lynn Abbey

  Literature, Unexpected, Applause

  12 Copy quote

• Once you've invested hundreds of hours in creating a coherent universe, your story's grown to around a half-million words and can't be written as anything less than a trilogy.

  Lynn Abbey

  Creating, Half, Stories

  4 Copy quote

• I'm not constrained by being a genre writer. Any story I can imagine, I can cast as a fantasy novel and probably get it published.

  Lynn Abbey

  Fantasy Novels, Stories, Literature

  8 Copy quote

• That bedrock faith that I could write was what blinded me to attempts to discourage me.

  Lynn Abbey

  Writing, Discouraging, Blinded

  8 Copy quote

• I write sets of books, but I've also written a lot of orphans.

  Lynn Abbey

  Book, Writing, Orphan

  4 Copy quote

• No one uses a ribbon typewriter any more, but your final draft is not the time to try to wring a few more sheets out of your inkjet cartridge.

  Lynn Abbey

  Typewriters, Trying, Finals

  7 Copy quote

• When I have an idea, it goes from vague, cloudy notion to 100,000 words in a heartbeat.

  Lynn Abbey

  Ideas, Literature, Heartbeat

  7 Copy quote

• It took me about 12 years to reach my million-word mark. The challenge now is to continue to challenge myself.

  Lynn Abbey

  Years, Challenges, Mark

  4 Copy quote

• If you write, one of the questions you're always trying to answer is, Where do you get your ideas? And, if you write, you know how pointless a question this is and how difficult it is to answer.

  Lynn Abbey

  Writing, Ideas, Always Trying

  4 Copy quote

• Neophyte writers tend to believe that there is something magical about ideas and that if they can just get a hold of a good one, then their futures are ensured.

  Lynn Abbey

  Believe, Ideas, Literature

  4 Copy quote

• When I'm not writing or tweaking my computer, I do embroidery. When I'm not plunging into the past, tweaking, or embroidering, I'm reading books about history, computers, or embroidery.

  Lynn Abbey

  Book, Reading, Writing

  19 Copy quote

• My writing has to support more than my research habit, but I love to curl up with a book about some dusty corner of history.

  Lynn Abbey

  Book, Writing, Support

  7 Copy quote

• One of my great passions is the collection of historical trivia.

  Lynn Abbey

  Passion, Historical, Literature

  7 Copy quote

• The money can be decent, but I really don't recommend the work-for-hire route as an entry into publishing. Too many things can go wrong.

  Lynn Abbey

  Literature, Decent, Publishing

  4 Copy quote

• I think my prose reads as if English were my second language. By the time I get to the end of a paragraph, I'm dodging bullets and gasping for breath.

  Lynn Abbey

  Writing, Thinking, Literature

  10 Copy quote

• Short-story writing requires an exquisite sense of balance. Novelists, frankly, can get away with more. A novel can have a dull spot or two, because the reader has made a different commitment.

  Lynn Abbey

  Commitment, Writing, Two

  7 Copy quote

• Editors of open anthologies actively seek submissions from all comers, established and unknown. They are willing to read whatever the tide washes up at their feet.

  Lynn Abbey

  Editors, Feet, Literature

  8 Copy quote

• For me, writing a short story is much, much harder than writing a novel.

  Lynn Abbey

  Writing, Stories, Novel

  4 Copy quote

• I'm one of those writers who, when writing, believes she's god-and that she hasn't bestowed free will on any of her characters. In that sense there are no surprises in any of my books.

  Lynn Abbey

  Believe, Book, Writing

  4 Copy quote

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