Literary Birthday – 18 September – Lynn Abbey

Happy Birthday, Lynn Abbey, born 18 September 1948.

10 Quotes

1. Ideas aren’t magical; the only tricky part is holding on to one long enough to get it written down.
2. A good short-story writer has an instinct for sketching in just enough background to ground the specific story.
3. 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.
4. For me, writing a short story is much, much harder than writing a novel.
5. 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.
6. That bedrock faith that I could write was what blinded me to attempts to discourage me.
7. When I have an idea, it goes from vague, cloudy notion to 100,000 words in a heartbeat.
8. 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.
9. Short-story writing requires an exquisite sense of balance.
10. Family legends confirm that I’ve been a storyteller pretty much from the moment I learned to talk. I quickly learned that character, pacing, and plot were important to any work of fiction, but that nothing was more important than believability.

Lynn Abbey is an American computer programmer and writer. She is the author of the bestselling fantasy adventure series, Thieves’ World, which include the novels Sanctuary and Thieves’ World: Turning Points.

 by Amanda Patterson

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