So Jackie tells me that several authors have stumbled across her site, and I’d like to take a moment to abuse my position of minor power and ask for their thoughts.
While you may read sites like Literary Escapism, you probably do it in the context of an author following the success of your own book, finding new ways to promote your book, or perhaps as a fan of your contemporaries. However, I’m curious, are there sites you follow as a professional writer? I’m not talking about the stuffy things like which publisher bought rights to a series, or anything like that – I’m looking for what you read to improve your own writing. For example, I am an RSS feed junkie, and read the following writing RSS feeds to improve my own scrawlings:
- Writing Tools
- Grammar Girl’s Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing
- Daily Writing Tips
- NaNoWriMo Home
- A Phrase A Week
On top of these there are several great Google widgets available for writers using Google’s personal homepage:
- http://www.autocrit.com/
- http://www.askaword.com/
- http://www.thenamegenerator.com/
- http://www.moderoom.com/writers-idea-bank/index.htm
- http://www.dictionary.com/wordoftheday/
- http://xmlgadgets.com/
What great tools and resources do you have out there to improve your style? I’m mainly interested in the freebies out there, but commercial tools are welcome as well. Some of you may say “reading many different authors and genres” will be at the top of your lists, but I’m looking for something a little less obvious – something more out of the way.
The Master and Overlord or better known as the hubby who keeps LE running. He rarely reviews, but he's the one who keeps everything running smoothly from the IT perspective.
Have you been to Edittorrent? here’s the link: http://edittorrent.blogspot.com/ there are tips to help mold your writing to please agents, etc. as well as discussions on what works and doesn’t
I just finished “Writing Romance” by Vanessa Grant. It comes with a disc that includes some macros you can run to look for weak words, formatting consistencies, and other tools.
Also… I’m not quite sure who wrote this post? Jackie, are we referring to ourselves in the third person now? Nicola isn’t sure she likes this. ;-)
No, I’m not referring to myself in the third person. Jesse, my husband, also writes some reviews for LE, but he doesn’t do it that often so I don’t have the authors posted along with the articles (I don’t need to see my name over and over) :)
Jesse is doing NaNoWriMo again this year.
Well OK then, LOL.