"I'm no athlete and my piano lessons were going nowhere; I got good marks in school, but there were always kids who outshined me-until I wrote a short story."

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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 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 books don't translate successfully into movies and one of the criticisms against an author ..."
• "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, ..."