"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"
About this Quote
Writers get asked "Where do you get your ideas?" the way magicians get asked where they hide the rabbit: with the assumption that the trick has a single, secret compartment. Lynn Abbey’s line bristles at that premise. She isn’t just dismissing the question as naive; she’s exposing the cultural hunger behind it. People want creativity to be a supply chain - a clean origin story you can replicate, monetize, or at least admire from a safe distance. Abbey points out that for anyone who actually writes, the question collapses on contact with reality.
The subtext is a defense of process over mythology. Ideas aren’t rare minerals extracted from a mystical cave; they’re the byproduct of attention, reading, memory, irritation, desire, overheard dialogue, misremembered history. When Abbey calls the question “pointless,” she’s also calling out how it dodges the harder, less glamorous truth: the real work is not getting ideas but testing them, shaping them, discarding most of them, then rewriting what survives. A non-writer asks for the spark; a writer lives in the combustion.
Context matters, too: genre authors like Abbey, who built careers in fantasy and shared-world storytelling, are especially familiar with the fetishization of “original ideas.” Their work is often treated as concept-first, as if worldbuilding arrives fully formed. Abbey’s answer quietly insists on labor, craft, and accumulation - and it punctures the flattering notion that creative people have access to a different universe. They don’t. They just stay awake to this one longer.
The subtext is a defense of process over mythology. Ideas aren’t rare minerals extracted from a mystical cave; they’re the byproduct of attention, reading, memory, irritation, desire, overheard dialogue, misremembered history. When Abbey calls the question “pointless,” she’s also calling out how it dodges the harder, less glamorous truth: the real work is not getting ideas but testing them, shaping them, discarding most of them, then rewriting what survives. A non-writer asks for the spark; a writer lives in the combustion.
Context matters, too: genre authors like Abbey, who built careers in fantasy and shared-world storytelling, are especially familiar with the fetishization of “original ideas.” Their work is often treated as concept-first, as if worldbuilding arrives fully formed. Abbey’s answer quietly insists on labor, craft, and accumulation - and it punctures the flattering notion that creative people have access to a different universe. They don’t. They just stay awake to this one longer.
Quote Details
| Topic | Writing |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
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