"Most books don't translate successfully into movies and one of the criticisms against an author like John Grisham, whose books are regularly made into movies, is that he's actually writing screenplays, not novels."

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More quotes from: Lynn Abbey

• "A dozen years is a long time in the world of publishing. The market is ..."
• "A good editor-and I don't claim to be one-can deduce the ideal elements of a ..."
• "A good short-story writer has an instinct for sketching in just enough background to ground ..."
• "A year or so ago, I considered writing a mainstream novel and, despite several time-consuming ..."
• "All authors are created equal, but, as the editor, I'm somewhat more equal than all ..."
• "As an author, you're usually responsible for both the creation and evolution of your characters, ..."
• "Because I'd been involved in the creation of a successful shared-world it was assumed that ..."
• "Before I was a writer I was a computer programmer. "
• "Compatibility problems are touchier. Sometimes author A does something that sends author B right through ..."
• "Continuity problems are fairly straightforward, with absolute conflicts being the easiest to resolve. If writer ..."
• "Contractual considerations are very important in shared-world or work-for-hire situations. I make sure I know ..."
• "During the many centuries that magic, here on this planet, was presumed to have worked, ..."
• "Editorial processes are subjective, based on what's available at a given moment in time, and ..."
• "Editors of invitation-only anthologies tend to be a secretive lot. We're looking for very specific ..."
• "Editors of open anthologies actively seek submissions from all comers, established and unknown. They are ..."
• "Every so often I'd be able to write a scene with greater flourish because I'd ..."
• "Flaws of style and sequence would fairly leap off the page and the means to ..."
• "For a good fiction writer-and that includes writers of SF and Fantasy-there is simply no ..."
• "For me, the rise and fall of the 1980s incarnation of TW was deeply personal ..."
• "For me, writing a short story is much, much harder than writing a novel. "
• "Friends who are not writers try to be sympathetic and understanding of a writer's mood, ..."
• "Gamers, especially the game masters, who are the primary audience for any game box, want ..."
• "Getting the new anthologies up and running has had its share of unexpected pitfalls. I ..."
• "I always make sure I have an escape clause that allows me to pull my ..."
• "I can usually tell the difference between a short story idea and a novel-length one ..."
• "I construct timelines for each story and a master timeline for sequencing the stories in ..."
• "I do have a small collection of traditional SF ideas which I've never been able ..."
• "I do keep a small file of samples from not-yet-invited authors. The cold, cruel fact ..."
• "I don't have any signed contracts right now, but my agent's out there shaking the ..."
• "I don't so much think of myself a fantasy writer as a writer of histories ..."
• "I don't strive for perfect continuity, which is good, because I'd never achieve it. "
• "I guess it's good to be known for something. "
• "I have a problematic relationship with magic: when push comes to shove, I don't believe ..."
• "I have some history books that I come back to when I'm trying to debug ..."
• "I love writing Thieves' World, but I feel a responsibility, too, to the other authors. ..."
• "I think my prose reads as if English were my second language. By the time ..."
• "I was one of those rare and fortunate writers who did not go through an ..."
• "I went to Oklahoma to recover from a shattering divorce and I couldn't have found ..."
• "I wish I knew how to imagine a short story, because I rather like the ..."
• "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 ..."
• "I'm always trolling for trivia. "
• "I'm currently working on my third book about Emma Merrigan, curse hunter and university librarian. "
• "I'm dense when it comes to discouragement. "
• "I'm no athlete and my piano lessons were going nowhere; I got good marks in ..."
• "I'm not constrained by being a genre writer. Any story I can imagine, I can ..."
• "I'm one of those writers who, when writing, believes she's god-and that she hasn't bestowed ..."
• "I've always seen Thieves' World from two perspectives-as a business property and as a creative ..."
• "I've developed a reputation as someone who can turn a sow's ear into a silk ..."
• "I've done a lot of shared-worlds and work-for-hire. Ask me if I think it's always ..."
• "I've got two degrees in medieval history. "
• "I've read short stories that are as dense as a 19th century novel and novels ..."
• "I've thought about writing in other genres, but my imagination just doesn't seem to lead ..."
• "Ideas are a writer's cheapest commodity. If I never had another idea, I still couldn't ..."
• "Ideas aren't magical; the only tricky part is holding on to one long enough to ..."
• "If all my dreams come true, I'll have a chance to write a straight-up historical... ..."
• "If I aim for a short-story idea, I then get to spend the next portion ..."
• "If I want to write SF, I'll have to write it under another name. "
• "If you write, one of the questions you're always trying to answer is, Where do ..."
• "In a general sense, all my protagonists eventually find themselves in situations so totally beyond ..."
• "In my high-school sophomore English class, we were given that hoary old assignment: write a ..."
• "In the best of all possible worlds, Tor will publish one anthology per year and ..."
• "In the last few years I've become more reliant on the Internet for research. I'm ..."
• "In the process of defending the integrity of my story, I would clean up the ..."
• "It took me about 12 years to reach my million-word mark. The challenge now is ..."
• "It's been a long time since I've written old-fashioned sword and sorcery; I'm hoping it's ..."
• "It's been great to work cooperatively with a group of talented authors again, but the ..."
• "It's harder to get stand-alone material published, but it's worth the wait and effort, and ..."
• "It's only recently that the special effects industry has evolved enough to be able to ..."
• "It's possible to become so comfortable with one's style and structure that one ceases to ..."
• "Last year I went on a Venice jag and now I'm planning a fantasy that's ..."
• "Magic works differently for every author who's written for the series. "
• "Magical realism is based on magical magic, that is, the happening of things that cannot ..."
• "Most readers seemed to like the never-ending conflict, but politics is not sword and sorcery, ..."
• "My magic is always empirical-it can be analyzed and replicated. "
• "My parents might say that I started telling stories when I learned to talk and ..."
• "My professional career began in early 1977 when I was recuperating from an auto accident. ..."
• "My reading is pre-screened. It takes a special talent to read dozens and dozens of ..."
• "My teacher decided that some of stories needed to be read aloud. I read without ..."

• "My writing has to support more than my research habit, but I love to curl ..."
• "Neophyte writers tend to believe that there is something magical about ideas and that if ..."
• "No one uses a ribbon typewriter any more, but your final draft is not the ..."
• "Nothing is too obscure for my interest. You just never know when some quirk of ..."
• "On the one hand, I'm looking for good stylists and storytellers who can play well ..."
• "Once you've invested hundreds of hours in creating a coherent universe, your story's grown to ..."
• "One of my great passions is the collection of historical trivia. "
• "One of the risks I took was turning one of the classic fairy-tale tropes on ..."
• "Our authors spent as much time conspiring with one another as they did writing their ..."
• "Our little writer's colony existed for about three years and it would take nearly that ..."
• "Persistence pays and so does a willingness to follow directions. "
• "Right now I think the most interesting SF and fantasy is being done in serial ..."
• "Short-story writing requires an exquisite sense of balance. Novelists, frankly, can get away with more. ..."
• "Some of the best advice I can give an aspiring author is trivial. Most times ..."
• "Thanks to bigger and better computers and their indexing capacities, I hope to keep a ..."
• "That bedrock faith that I could write was what blinded me to attempts to discourage ..."
• "The actual process of selling my first novel was exciting at the time. I was ..."
• "The books I've written for gaming companies are a like games of miniature golf where ..."
• "The money can be decent, but I really don't recommend the work-for-hire route as an ..."
• "The most annoying risk that I find associated with work-for-hire situations is somebody's always trying ..."
• "The quality of editing in the work-for-hire world is generally a few notches below what ..."
• "There is nothing that compares to an unexpected round of applause. "
• "There's a lot of hearsay and worse out on the Internet and, though I write ..."
• "Thieves' World is otherwise known as the project that ate my life in the '80s. "
• "Time really can heal wounds. By the mid-90s, when I realized that I was signing ..."
• "To feel free enough to write at all, I have to give my research a ..."
• "We're out to prove the naysayers wrong. Maybe a shared-world anthology can't hit the bestseller ..."
• "We've had a few inquiries from companies and individuals looking to develop an interactive, web-based ..."
• "Were I to decide that I didn't want to be a genre writer, or that ..."
• "When done well, the shared universes are richer than their single-creator counterparts. "
• "When I have an idea, it goes from vague, cloudy notion to 100,000 words in ..."
• "When I started out, I thought being a writer was all about writing. Writing is ..."
• "When I'm not writing or tweaking my computer, I do embroidery. When I'm not plunging ..."
• "When I'm writing my own material, I've full control over creation and evolution, vertical and ..."
• "Whenever I encounter an article that makes my ears wiggle, I give it a number, ..."
• "Writing genre fantasy requires a few more research twists, most of them involving magic. By ..."
• "You usually don't get the copyright or reprint rights in a shared-world or work-for-hire situation, ..."