Cthulu Mythos, Writing, and Why Lovecraft is My Homeboy

I just finished my chronological outline for my novel. I've had a few false starts already, but lacked knowledge of "where it was going" and hit dead ends. I think this is the first time I really have a clear picture of an ENTIRE book in my head. When I was in college and writing chapters of different novels for different creative writing classes, I had a lot of ideas but not a lot of direction. I almost fell into that trap again.

The man and his creation.*Recently, I read At the Mountains of Madness by H. P. Lovecraft. The man is a genius and I don't care if you don't like his paragraph sentences. I relish every word. So I had Lovecraft on the brain, and while researching what an Old One might have looked like, I came across this short little article written by Lovecraft himself called Notes on Writing Weird Fiction.

It wasn't anything particularly brilliant. It was simple. Too simple. But in a way, that's what made it so decidedly useful to me.

I've been overwhelmed with tons of information about writing lately. It's too much to process. But I like this Lovecraft dude. And his advice isn't pretentious or overly wordy either (surprising cause the man loves his descriptions). It helped me. A lot.

It's the reason I have this first outline done now. What started as a dream that rattled me one night is now something tangible. My next step is to flesh out my characters some more. Then I'll do a few chapter outlines, and I think I'll actually get started on this thing. For reals this time.

*Picture stoled from here: http://www.rehupa.com/?p=1966