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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Lynn Abbey
Age: 76
Born: 1948
Born: September 8
Author
Novelist
Science Fiction Writer
Writer
Peekskill
New York
Marilyn Lorraine Abbey
Sense
Dull
Away
Requires
Two
Commitment
Stories
Reader
Exquisite
Different
Short
Frankly
Writing
Balance
Spot
Made
Novel
Novelists
Story
Spots

More quotes by Lynn Abbey

Image
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
Image
That bedrock faith that I could write was what blinded me to attempts to discourage me.
Lynn Abbey
Image
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
Image
When I have an idea, it goes from vague, cloudy notion to 100,000 words in a heartbeat.
Lynn Abbey
Image
I'm dense when it comes to discouragement.
Lynn Abbey
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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 my agent nor my editors want to risk my brand by jumping genre.
Lynn Abbey
Image
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
Image
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
Image
Ideas aren't magical the only tricky part is holding on to one long enough to get it written down.
Lynn Abbey
Image
I write sets of books, but I've also written a lot of orphans.
Lynn Abbey
Image
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
Image
For me, writing a short story is much, much harder than writing a novel.
Lynn Abbey
Image
It took me about 12 years to reach my million-word mark. The challenge now is to continue to challenge myself.
Lynn Abbey
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
There is nothing that compares to an unexpected round of applause.
Lynn Abbey