Lynn Abbey Quotes

30 quotes in 436 categories

• Ideas aren't magical; the only tricky part is holding on to one long enough to get it written down.
• 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…
• 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.
• A good short-story writer has an instinct for sketching in just enough background to ground the specific story.
• 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…
• 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…
• 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…
• For me, writing a short story is much, much harder than writing a novel.
• I do have a small collection of traditional SF ideas which I've never been able to sell. I'm known as a fantasy writer and neither…
• I write sets of books, but I've also written a lot of orphans.
• 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…
• I'm dense when it comes to discouragement.
• 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.
• 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…
• Im always trolling for trivia.
• It's possible to become so comfortable with one's style and structure that one ceases to grow.
• 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…
• 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…
• There is nothing that compares to an unexpected round of applause.
• One of my great passions is the collection of historical trivia.

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