how to outline a novel

Maybe not as timely as it could be, since everyone’s finishing up Nano novels, but just in case: 8 Ways to Outline a Novel on Litreactor

Some of you have two weeks left to sub to She Walks in Shadows. All woman Lovecraft antho, pays 6 cents a word (pro rate). Guidelines.

Good piece about science-fiction writer Nnedi Okarafor on BookRiot. “I came to her work at a time when the debate about a woman’s place in the world of science fiction, fantasy, and speculative fiction was getting a lot of buzz. I realized that I’d read a few of the women who’d made their mark in that realm ““ Ursula K. LeGuin, Octavia Butler, Margaret Atwood, Jo Walton- but I felt as though I hadn’t gone far enough. Okorafor’s stories have encouraged me to travel further down that path.”

Interested in a writer’s retreat? Here’s a pretty good list of them.

Ray Bradbury talks about creativity and how our motives shape our writing. On the same site, Umberto Eco talks about the pleasures of maps of imaginary places.

What happens in your head while you’re reading? Your brain on stories.

David Cronenburg is interviewed about his process of novel writing, as well as finding beauty in unlikely corners. “There are many realities we need to ignore in order to function. Whenever we’re reminded of that, however obliquely, it is very disturbing””there’s a real dissonance that’s happening there. But of course it’s part of the function of art to keep that dissonance happening.”

An article with a lot of resonance for the self-pub versus traditional publishing argument about day jobs, found via M.C.A. Hogarth.

In The Atlantic, Jeff VanderMeer talks about the uncanny power of weird fiction.

Great piece about writers and their real influences, the things that shape their writing.. “I have a theory: the thing that makes you a unique writer hasn’t got so much to do with your influences as it does with how you became a writer in the first place. I think your preferences””your obsessions””come just as much from the first sorts of things you consumed and were passionate about. Whether that’s pop music, comics, “lowbrow” fiction, soap operas, or anything else, the thing that matters most is what started you writing stories.”