"It took me about 12 years to reach my million-word mark. The challenge now is to continue to challenge myself"
About this Quote
The line captures both the apprenticeship of a writer and the restlessness required to keep growing. A million words suggests not just published pages, but drafts, abandoned chapters, rewrites, and the long grind of getting sentences to behave. Twelve years hints at steady craft rather than lightning-strike genius, the cumulative discipline that builds voice, stamina, and technical control. Reaching that threshold can feel like arriving, yet the second sentence turns the milestone into a starting line: after competence comes the harder task of refusing comfort.
Lynn Abbey knows the pressure of reinvention. As a veteran of fantasy, co-creator of the Thieves' World shared-world series, and a writer of tie-in fiction, she has written inside tight constraints and open frontiers alike. Shared worlds demand collaboration, respect for canon, and the agility to make something fresh within limits. Tie-in work asks a writer to inhabit established settings with authority while still sounding alive. Those conditions can tempt a writer to rely on proven moves, but they also forge the habit of seeking new angles, new textures, new stakes. The phrasing "to continue to challenge myself" reads as a refusal to let the market, the brand, or the fans dictate the boundaries of imagination.
Behind the line sits a quiet warning: skill accumulates, but so do habits. The same instincts that once rescued a draft can become shortcuts that deaden it. Readers may reward repetition; deadlines encourage formula. Growth requires deliberate discomfort. That can mean risky structures, unfamiliar voices, deeper moral knots, or simply asking harder questions of characters and worldbuilding. It is a vow to keep learning after the supposed apprenticeship is over.
The million words are a threshold of craft; the next million test character. Abbey reframes success not as arrival but as an enduring curiosity, a willingness to fail forward so the work stays awake and the writer remains worth reading.
Lynn Abbey knows the pressure of reinvention. As a veteran of fantasy, co-creator of the Thieves' World shared-world series, and a writer of tie-in fiction, she has written inside tight constraints and open frontiers alike. Shared worlds demand collaboration, respect for canon, and the agility to make something fresh within limits. Tie-in work asks a writer to inhabit established settings with authority while still sounding alive. Those conditions can tempt a writer to rely on proven moves, but they also forge the habit of seeking new angles, new textures, new stakes. The phrasing "to continue to challenge myself" reads as a refusal to let the market, the brand, or the fans dictate the boundaries of imagination.
Behind the line sits a quiet warning: skill accumulates, but so do habits. The same instincts that once rescued a draft can become shortcuts that deaden it. Readers may reward repetition; deadlines encourage formula. Growth requires deliberate discomfort. That can mean risky structures, unfamiliar voices, deeper moral knots, or simply asking harder questions of characters and worldbuilding. It is a vow to keep learning after the supposed apprenticeship is over.
The million words are a threshold of craft; the next million test character. Abbey reframes success not as arrival but as an enduring curiosity, a willingness to fail forward so the work stays awake and the writer remains worth reading.
Quote Details
| Topic | Writing |
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