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Writing Links

While surfing the web, I occasionally run across sites that are full of information for aspiring writers. Here are a few that I like to refer to from time to time...

Writer's Digest has a useful website, an extension of the magazine, with all sorts of tidbits to help you write better and get published. If you're suffering from a little writer's block, they have a weekly "Writing Prompt" to jog the brain. This week's prompt: "You’re at your favorite department store buying a birthday present for a friend. As the cashier gives you change, you notice a message with specific instructions scribbled on one of the bills. What did the instructions say? Did you carry them out and, if so, how?"

Pat Holt, a book editor and critic at the San Francisco Chronicle (among other book-related postions), presents "Ten Mistakes Writers Don't See (But Can Easily Fix When They Do.)" She says, "The list also could be called, '10 COMMON PROBLEMS THAT DISMISS YOU AS AN AMATEUR,' because these mistakes are obvious to literary agents and editors, who may start wording their decline letter by page 5."

Confusing Words is a collection of 3210 troublesome words for writers and readers grouped according to the way they are confused and misused. The current top five most confusing words? Affect, arroyo, canyon, its, effect.

There are several blogging agents. The most entertaining is Miss Snark, who "vents her wrath on the hapless world of writers and crushes them to sand beneath her T. Rexual heels of stiletto snark."

At the blog "Making Light," there's an old post dating back to February of 2004 that Teresa Hayden has written that dissects rejection letters and aspiring authors' reactions to them -- some insights into the Rejection Collection website.

At his Coping with Sanity blog, Bryon Quertermous has done what I've done here -- just more so. It's a listing of the 25 sites that are must haves for any fiction writer.

If you've got some favorite writing tips sites, let me know what they are.

posted by fdtate @ 9:05 PM