A good editor-and I don't claim to be one-can deduce the ideal elements of a writer's style and story and administer the necessary guidance to trick the writer into revealing it.
Quotations/Quotes:- Lynn Abbey
Source:- http://amazing-quotes-quotations.blogspot.com/
A good short-story writer has an instinct for sketching in just enough background to ground the specific story.
Quotations/Quotes:- Lynn Abbey
Source:- http://amazing-quotes-quotations.blogspot.com/
All authors are created equal, but, as the editor, I'm somewhat more equal than all the others.
Quotations/Quotes:- Lynn Abbey
Source:- http://amazing-quotes-quotations.blogspot.com/
Because I'd been involved in the creation of a successful shared-world it was assumed that I'd know the rules in other shared worlds, so the invitations flowed my way.
Quotations/Quotes:- Lynn Abbey
Source:- http://amazing-quotes-quotations.blogspot.com/
Before I was a writer I was a computer programmer.
Quotations/Quotes:- Lynn Abbey
Source:- http://amazing-quotes-quotations.blogspot.com/
Compatibility problems are touchier. Sometimes author A does something that sends author B right through the roof and the editor has to scramble to play peacemaker.
Quotations/Quotes:- Lynn Abbey
Source:- http://amazing-quotes-quotations.blogspot.com/
Contractual considerations are very important in shared-world or work-for-hire situations. I make sure I know exactly what's expected.
Quotations/Quotes:- Lynn Abbey
Source:- http://amazing-quotes-quotations.blogspot.com/
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.
Quotations/Quotes:- Lynn Abbey
Source:- http://amazing-quotes-quotations.blogspot.com/
Editorial processes are subjective, based on what's available at a given moment in time, and ultimately unfair.
Quotations/Quotes:- Lynn Abbey
Source:- http://amazing-quotes-quotations.blogspot.com/
Editors of invitation-only anthologies tend to be a secretive lot. We're looking for very specific things in our story mix and know the voices we're looking for to round out the chorus
Quotations/Quotes:- Lynn Abbey
Source:- http://amazing-quotes-quotations.blogspot.com/
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.
Quotations/Quotes:- Lynn Abbey
Source:- http://amazing-quotes-quotations.blogspot.com/
Every so often I'd be able to write a scene with greater flourish because I'd gotten lucky with my words as I was writing them down, but no surprises.
Quotations/Quotes:- Lynn Abbey
Source:- http://amazing-quotes-quotations.blogspot.com/
Flaws of style and sequence would fairly leap off the page and the means to correct them would, too.
Quotations/Quotes:- Lynn Abbey
Source:- http://amazing-quotes-quotations.blogspot.com/
For a good fiction writer-and that includes writers of SF and Fantasy-there is simply no such thing as useless research. I never pass up an opportunity to learn how something is made or used.
Quotations/Quotes:- Lynn Abbey
Source:- http://amazing-quotes-quotations.blogspot.com/
For me, the rise and fall of the 1980s incarnation of TW was deeply personal and intertwined with the rise and fall of my marriage to co-editor, Robert Asprin.
Quotations/Quotes:- Lynn Abbey
Source:- http://amazing-quotes-quotations.blogspot.com/
For me, writing a short story is much, much harder than writing a novel.
Quotations/Quotes:- Lynn Abbey
Source:- http://amazing-quotes-quotations.blogspot.com/
Friends who are not writers try to be sympathetic and understanding of a writer's mood, but, truly, it takes one to know one.
Quotations/Quotes:- Lynn Abbey
Source:- http://amazing-quotes-quotations.blogspot.com/
Gamers, especially the game masters, who are the primary audience for any game box, want precision because that's what the players want.
Quotations/Quotes:- Lynn Abbey
Source:- http://amazing-quotes-quotations.blogspot.com/
Getting the new anthologies up and running has had its share of unexpected pitfalls. I hope I'm not being naive or unduly optimistic when I think that, time-wise, the worst is over.
Quotations/Quotes:- Lynn Abbey
Source:- http://amazing-quotes-quotations.blogspot.com/
I always make sure I have an escape clause that allows me to pull my name off a project if I have to abandon it.
Quotations/Quotes:- Lynn Abbey
Source:- http://amazing-quotes-quotations.blogspot.com/
I can usually tell the difference between a short story idea and a novel-length one when someone describes the idea to me.
Quotations/Quotes:- Lynn Abbey
Source:- http://amazing-quotes-quotations.blogspot.com/
I construct timelines for each story and a master timeline for sequencing the stories in the volume.
Quotations/Quotes:- Lynn Abbey
Source:- http://amazing-quotes-quotations.blogspot.com/
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.
Quotations/Quotes:- Lynn Abbey
Source:- http://amazing-quotes-quotations.blogspot.com/
I do keep a small file of samples from not-yet-invited authors. The cold, cruel fact is that I wouldn't be doing any of them a favor if I asked for a story.
Quotations/Quotes:- Lynn Abbey
Source:- http://amazing-quotes-quotations.blogspot.com/
I don't have any signed contracts right now, but my agent's out there shaking the bushes vigorously.
Quotations/Quotes:- Lynn Abbey
Source:- http://amazing-quotes-quotations.blogspot.com/
I don't strive for perfect continuity, which is good, because I'd never achieve it.
Quotations/Quotes:- Lynn Abbey
Source:- http://amazing-quotes-quotations.blogspot.com/
I guess it's good to be known for something.
Quotations/Quotes:- Lynn Abbey
Source:- http://amazing-quotes-quotations.blogspot.com/
I have a problematic relationship with magic: when push comes to shove, I don't believe in it.
Quotations/Quotes:- Lynn Abbey
Source:- http://amazing-quotes-quotations.blogspot.com/
I have some history books that I come back to when I'm trying to debug my worlds.
Quotations/Quotes:- Lynn Abbey
Source:- http://amazing-quotes-quotations.blogspot.com/
I love writing Thieves' World, but I feel a responsibility, too, to the other authors. I've lost many nights' sleep worrying if I've made the sandbox too large, too small.
Quotations/Quotes:- Lynn Abbey
Source:- http://amazing-quotes-quotations.blogspot.com/
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.
Quotations/Quotes:- Lynn Abbey
Source:- http://amazing-quotes-quotations.blogspot.com/
I wish I knew how to imagine a short story, because I rather like the form, but they're too time-consuming for me to write on a regular basis.
Quotations/Quotes:- Lynn Abbey
Source:- http://amazing-quotes-quotations.blogspot.com/
I write sets of books, but I've also written a lot of orphans.
Quotations/Quotes:- Lynn Abbey
Source:- http://amazing-quotes-quotations.blogspot.com/
I've developed a reputation as someone who can turn a sow's ear into a silk purse when it comes to pulling a story out of a murky milieu, and that keeps my name in circulation.
Quotations/Quotes:- Lynn Abbey
Source:- http://amazing-quotes-quotations.blogspot.com/
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.
Quotations/Quotes:- Lynn Abbey
Source:- http://amazing-quotes-quotations.blogspot.com/
I'm always trolling for trivia.
Quotations/Quotes:- Lynn Abbey
Source:- http://amazing-quotes-quotations.blogspot.com/
I'm currently working on my third book about Emma Merrigan, curse hunter and university librarian.
Quotations/Quotes:- Lynn Abbey
Source:- http://amazing-quotes-quotations.blogspot.com/
I'm dense when it comes to discouragement.
Quotations/Quotes:- Lynn Abbey
Source:- http://amazing-quotes-quotations.blogspot.com/
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.
Quotations/Quotes:- Lynn Abbey
Source:- http://amazing-quotes-quotations.blogspot.com/
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.
Quotations/Quotes:- Lynn Abbey
Source:- http://amazing-quotes-quotations.blogspot.com/
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.
Quotations/Quotes:- Lynn Abbey
Source:- http://amazing-quotes-quotations.blogspot.com/
I've always seen Thieves' World from two perspectives-as a business property and as a creative sandbox.
Quotations/Quotes:- Lynn Abbey
Source:- http://amazing-quotes-quotations.blogspot.com/
I've done a lot of shared-worlds and work-for-hire. Ask me if I think it's always been good for my career and the unequivocal answer is No, but it's paid the bills when the bills.
Quotations/Quotes:- Lynn Abbey
Source:- http://amazing-quotes-quotations.blogspot.com/
I've got two degrees in medieval history.
Quotations/Quotes:- Lynn Abbey
Source:- http://amazing-quotes-quotations.blogspot.com/
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.
Quotations/Quotes:- Lynn Abbey
Source:- http://amazing-quotes-quotations.blogspot.com/
I've thought about writing in other genres, but my imagination just doesn't seem to lead me in other directions.
Quotations/Quotes:- Lynn Abbey
Source:- http://amazing-quotes-quotations.blogspot.com/
Ideas are a writer's cheapest commodity. If I never had another idea, I still couldn't write my way through all the notions rattling around in my hindbrain this morning.
Quotations/Quotes:- Lynn Abbey
Source:- http://amazing-quotes-quotations.blogspot.com/
Ideas aren't magical; the only tricky part is holding on to one long enough to get it written down.
Quotations/Quotes:- Lynn Abbey
Source:- http://amazing-quotes-quotations.blogspot.com/
If all my dreams come true, I'll have a chance to write a straight-up historical... It won't be an easy task... My Latin's gotten very rusty over the years.
Quotations/Quotes:- Lynn Abbey
Source:- http://amazing-quotes-quotations.blogspot.com/
If I aim for a short-story idea, I then get to spend the next portion of my life removing 90,000 words from what my imagination generated.
Quotations/Quotes:- Lynn Abbey
Source:- http://amazing-quotes-quotations.blogspot.com/
If I want to write SF, I'll have to write it under another name.
Quotations/Quotes:- Lynn Abbey
Source:- http://amazing-quotes-quotations.blogspot.com/
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.
Quotations/Quotes:- Lynn Abbey
Source:- http://amazing-quotes-quotations.blogspot.com/
In a general sense, all my protagonists eventually find themselves in situations so totally beyond their control that all they can do is hunker down and trust their fallible guts.
Quotations/Quotes:- Lynn Abbey
Source:- http://amazing-quotes-quotations.blogspot.com/
In the best of all possible worlds, Tor will publish one anthology per year and I'll find the time to write one-and-a-half Quotations/Quotes:- Lynn Abbey books in the same period.
Quotations/Quotes:- Lynn Abbey
Source:- http://amazing-quotes-quotations.blogspot.com/
In the last few years I've become more reliant on the Internet for research. I'm addicted to Google.
Quotations/Quotes:- Lynn Abbey
Source:- http://amazing-quotes-quotations.blogspot.com/
In the process of defending the integrity of my story, I would clean up the structural problems without focusing on them. I've used it myself with the writers I've mentored.
Quotations/Quotes:- Lynn Abbey
Source:- http://amazing-quotes-quotations.blogspot.com/
It took me about 12 years to reach my million-word mark. The challenge now is to continue to challenge myself.
Quotations/Quotes:- Lynn Abbey
Source:- http://amazing-quotes-quotations.blogspot.com/
It's been a long time since I've written old-fashioned sword and sorcery; I'm hoping it's like riding a bicycle.
Quotations/Quotes:- Lynn Abbey
Source:- http://amazing-quotes-quotations.blogspot.com/
It's harder to get stand-alone material published, but it's worth the wait and effort, and then, if you really want to do a Star Trek novel, you can pretty much dictate the terms.
Quotations/Quotes:- Lynn Abbey
Source:- http://amazing-quotes-quotations.blogspot.com/
It's possible to become so comfortable with one's style and structure that one ceases to grow.
Quotations/Quotes:- Lynn Abbey
Source:- http://amazing-quotes-quotations.blogspot.com/
Last year I went on a
Quotations/Quotes:- Lynn Abbey
Source:- http://amazing-quotes-quotations.blogspot.com/
Magic works differently for every author who's written for the series.
Quotations/Quotes:- Lynn Abbey
Source:- http://amazing-quotes-quotations.blogspot.com/
Magical realism is based on magical magic, that is, the happening of things that cannot be explained by the characters and are not explained by the author.
Quotations/Quotes:- Lynn Abbey
Source:- http://amazing-quotes-quotations.blogspot.com/
Most readers seemed to like the never-ending conflict, but politics is not sword and sorcery, and Thieves' World, at its best, was down-and-dirty sword and sorcery. Sales were starting to drop off.
Quotations/Quotes:- Lynn Abbey
Source:- http://amazing-quotes-quotations.blogspot.com/
My magic is always empirical-it can be analyzed and replicated.
Quotations/Quotes:- Lynn Abbey
Source:- http://amazing-quotes-quotations.blogspot.com/
My parents might say that I started telling stories when I learned to talk and decided that I'd become a writer the day I recognized a typewriter.
Quotations/Quotes:- Lynn Abbey
Source:- http://amazing-quotes-quotations.blogspot.com/
My professional career began in early 1977 when I was recuperating from an auto accident. With one ankle broken and the other severely sprained, I found myself thinking that I could write a novel.
Quotations/Quotes:- Lynn Abbey
Source:- http://amazing-quotes-quotations.blogspot.com/
My reading is pre-screened. It takes a special talent to read dozens and dozens of stories looking for the handful that merit inclusion in a magazine or anthology.
Quotations/Quotes:- Lynn Abbey
Source:- http://amazing-quotes-quotations.blogspot.com/
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.
Quotations/Quotes:- Lynn Abbey
Source:- http://amazing-quotes-quotations.blogspot.com/
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.
Quotations/Quotes:- Lynn Abbey
Source:- http://amazing-quotes-quotations.blogspot.com/
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.
Quotations/Quotes:- Lynn Abbey
Source:- http://amazing-quotes-quotations.blogspot.com/
Nothing is too obscure for my interest. You just never know when some quirk of science or history is going to prove useful.
Quotations/Quotes:- Lynn Abbey
Source:- http://amazing-quotes-quotations.blogspot.com/
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.
Quotations/Quotes:- Lynn Abbey
Source:- http://amazing-quotes-quotations.blogspot.com/
One of my great passions is the collection of historical trivia.
Quotations/Quotes:- Lynn Abbey
Source:- http://amazing-quotes-quotations.blogspot.com/
Our little writer's colony existed for about three years and it would take nearly that long to share the stories we accumulated.
Quotations/Quotes:- Lynn Abbey
Source:- http://amazing-quotes-quotations.blogspot.com/
Persistence pays and so does a willingness to follow directions.
Quotations/Quotes:- Lynn Abbey
Source:- http://amazing-quotes-quotations.blogspot.com/
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.
Quotations/Quotes:- Lynn Abbey
Source:- http://amazing-quotes-quotations.blogspot.com/
That bedrock faith that I could write was what blinded me to attempts to discourage me.
Quotations/Quotes:- Lynn Abbey
Source:- http://amazing-quotes-quotations.blogspot.com/
The actual process of selling my first novel was exciting at the time. I was no longer an apprentice but had become a journeyman.
Quotations/Quotes:- Lynn Abbey
Source:- http://amazing-quotes-quotations.blogspot.com/
The books I've written for gaming companies are a like games of miniature golf where the object is to weave an interesting story through an obstacle course.
Quotations/Quotes:- Lynn Abbey
Source:- http://amazing-quotes-quotations.blogspot.com/
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.
Quotations/Quotes:- Lynn Abbey
Source:- http://amazing-quotes-quotations.blogspot.com/
There is nothing that compares to an unexpected round of applause.
Quotations/Quotes:- Lynn Abbey
Source:- http://amazing-quotes-quotations.blogspot.com/
There's a lot of hearsay and worse out on the Internet and, though I write fiction, I like to think that my background information is solid.
Quotations/Quotes:- Lynn Abbey
Source:- http://amazing-quotes-quotations.blogspot.com/
Thieves' World is otherwise known as the project that ate my life in the '80s.
Quotations/Quotes:- Lynn Abbey
Source:- http://amazing-quotes-quotations.blogspot.com/
Time really can heal wounds. By the mid-90s, when I realized that I was signing books that were older than the readers offering them to me, I began to reconsider my position.
Quotations/Quotes:- Lynn Abbey
Source:- http://amazing-quotes-quotations.blogspot.com/
To feel free enough to write at all, I have to give my research a twist that allows me to say, Okay, this is NOT 12th century France.
Quotations/Quotes:- Lynn Abbey
Source:- http://amazing-quotes-quotations.blogspot.com/
Were I to decide that I didn't want to be a genre writer, or that I wanted to switch genres, I'd be looking at starting over.
Quotations/Quotes:- Lynn Abbey
Source:- http://amazing-quotes-quotations.blogspot.com/
We're out to prove the naysayers wrong. Maybe a shared-world anthology can't hit the bestseller lists in this day and age, but one, at least, is going to survive.
Quotations/Quotes:- Lynn Abbey
Source:- http://amazing-quotes-quotations.blogspot.com/
We've had a few inquiries from companies and individuals looking to develop an interactive, web-based game but, to date, none of them have progressed to the contract and license stage.
Quotations/Quotes:- Lynn Abbey
Source:- http://amazing-quotes-quotations.blogspot.com/
When done well, the shared universes are richer than their single-creator counterparts.
Quotations/Quotes:- Lynn Abbey
Source:- http://amazing-quotes-quotations.blogspot.com/
When I have an idea, it goes from vague, cloudy notion to 100,000 words in a heartbeat.
Quotations/Quotes:- Lynn Abbey
Source:- http://amazing-quotes-quotations.blogspot.com/
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.
Quotations/Quotes:- Lynn Abbey
Source:- http://amazing-quotes-quotations.blogspot.com/
You usually don't get the copyright or reprint rights in a shared-world or work-for-hire situation, so your ability to make additional money off your work is limited.
Quotations/Quotes:- Lynn Abbey
Source:- http://amazing-quotes-quotations.blogspot.com/
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