At O, Isabelle Allende discusses her newest book, A Long Petal of the Sea, with Elena Nicolaou, and how the world’s inexplicable nature drove her writing. “I grew up with the idea that the world is a very mysterious place,” Allende says, “and there are many dimensions of reality. If you open your heart and your mind, your heart is enriched by everything we cannot explain and control, but we see the evidence.”
Isabel Allende on the Many Dimensions of Reality
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Scrivening a New Scrivener
“The last thing your creative brain needs is a klaxon shouting WRONG while you’re in the middle of a creative thought. Eventually, as you use Neo, you’ll stop thinking about spelling and typos. This will push your creativity to the next level. You can always step through a spell check any time you like. But not while you’re writing.” Hugh Howey, author of the Wool series, proposes a new word processor called Neo.“I’m currently talking with programmers and consultants on how to get this done,” he writes on his blog, describing the application’s potential features. “Might be a decade before anything comes to light, so don’t hold your breath. But I’m willing to invest the time and money to make this a reality.” Pair with programmer Philip Hopkins‘s meditation on code and writing.
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Open and Shut
The Culturephiles want to put the kibosh on the “open letter” bit. What better way to tackle that than with an open letter.
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Thin Mints, a Challenger Appears
This has nothing to do with books, but if you’re like me, it’s important, life-altering, and worthy of constant news coverage: The Girl Scouts are releasing a new cookie for their 100th Anniversary. The lemony “Savannah Smiles” will commemorate the Scouts’ southern roots. Need help tracking down a box? I suggest the Girl Scout Cookie Locator app for your smartphone.
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Moving Beyond Mary Shelley
Rachel Feder considers why Mary Shelley is often credited as the "ingénue inventor of speculative fiction," while Margaret Cavendish remain relatively unknown.
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“I guess you could call this ‘fake livetweeting’.”
The latest installment in The Believer’s “What Would Twitter Do?” series (which we’ve mentioned before) features London Review of Books editor Christian Lorentzen, whose Twitter feed, Sheila Heti writes, “seem[s] like what someone who only expresse[s] himself as a fiction writer within the universe of twitter might come up with.” Meanwhile, Heti has a review of The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P. by Adelle Waldman in (where else?) the LRB.
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