43 Amazing Resources For Writers

May 8, 2008

These amazing resources for writers will enhance your creativity and help you to become a better writer.

Don’t Give Most Of Your Writing Profits To Someone Else. Discover how to create and sell your own ebook in 7 days and make an excellent profit on your work.

Margaret Atwood on YouTube: Excellent YouTube Interview with Canadian novelist, Margaret Atwood.

7 Deadly Fears of Writing Explored: From rejection to exposing yourself, Men With Pens discuss the fears commonly encountered by writers and gives you the resources to deal with them.

The Courage To Hear Yourself Sing: This wonderful free ebook by Joanna Young is an excellent resource, which covers 5 takes on authentic writing.

Creative Writing Prompts: Never be stuck for words again - over 300 writing prompts to stimulate your imagination.

Novel Writing Made Easy - You Can Do It Once You’ve Read This Brilliant Writers Resource.

Arvon Foundation: Considered by many to run the best short courses in the UK for writers. Courses in many different genres run Monday through Saturday in four different centres throughout the UK. It’s best to book in January when the new brochure comes out as places go quickly.

The Bridport Prize: This poetry and short story has been running in the UK for over 30 years and is open to writers from all over the world. The closing date is the end of June and the winner of each section receives a prize of £5000 ($10000) and will also have their work included in an anthology
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A Fabulous Resource - BBC Writer’s Room: Are you interested in scriptwriting? The BBC accepts unsolicited scripts. Check out the Writer’s Room to discover what they’re looking for and how to submit your work.

Tips, Contests and Interviews: An extensive resource from Writer’s Digest magazine, with tips, contests and interviews for writers.

Writers Write Discussion Forum: Excellent and busy forums for writers of all genres.

25,000 Words and A Week in A Freelance Writer’s Life: You’d be forgiven for thinking that it was impossible to write 25,000 words in one week. Monika Mundell shares the secret to a regular freelance writers income.

10 Universities Offering Free Writing Courses Online: Here’s your chance to take a short writing course, from your own home - completely free of charge.

15 Craft Exercises For Writers: Jump start your imagination with these excellent writing exercises.

Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America Inc: Massive resource for fantasy and science fiction writers with advice for beginning writers and also advanced topics, including “how to build new worlds” and “murder your darlings”.

Free Mini-Courses: The BBC offers dozens of free mini-courses for writers of all levels.

Stanford University Sentence Generator: Sometimes, the biggest challenge in writing is actually getting started. If this is something you struggle with, let the sentence generator come up with the first sentence for you. This sentence generator will actually let you choose the type of sentence - eg. Bond Movie, Bionic Woman etc. I chose “suicide note” and this is what it came up with: “Dear dog, I want to jump off a bridge sometime or another because Hell sounds interesting. I’m sure you will be glad to hear of my death. Please dispose of my corpse by cremation and give my heart to my fish. Take me away!”

Random Name Generator: Are you a fiction writer, struggling to come up with good character names? The random name generator is a wonderful resource. It will find a name for your hero, no matter what part of the world he/she comes from.

Writing Advice From Minette Walters: Best selling novelist, Minette Walters shares some excellent advice for writers.

Why The Internet Is The Perfect Market For Writers: If you’re considering writing for Internet markets, check out this article by Bob Younce, which explains why the Internet is a great market for writers.

Mslexia: Home of the magazine for women who write. You’ll find plenty of great writing tips and author interviews here.

Glimmer Train: Monthly competitions for writers of previously unpublished literary fiction.

Isabel’s Guide To Writing & Getting Published: Novelist, Isabel Wolff shows you what questions to ask yourself to determine whether you really want to become a writer. She also explains how to go about getting an agent and becoming a published author.

Sold On Song - A Resource For Songwriters: A BBC guide to the whole song writing process and the music business.

Poetry Magic: A comprehensive guide to writing and publishing poetry.

100 Best First Lines: Can’t get started? This great writers resource gives you the best first lines from published novels and you just carry on writing.

31 Ways To Find Inspiration For Your Writing: Leo of Write to Done shares 31 sources of inspiration that writers can use.

Authors and Magical Thinking: Great advice for writers, including why stalking publishers and agents just isn’t a smart idea.

How I Write A Novel: If you keep getting lost in your plot, Tobias Buckell offers some great advice for getting yourself organised. In fact, his whole blog is an excellent resource for writers.

Write a Memoir: Do you have an interesting personal story to tell? William Zinsser explains how to write a memoir by being yourself, speaking freely and thinking small.

How To Write And Publish Your Own Ebook In Only 7 Days

Writers Weekly: This excellent ezine features excellent advice, writers markets etc and it is also home to a regular 24 hour short story competition.

Literary Agents and Publishers: Free database with details of over 1600 literary agents and publishers.

Gotham Writers Workshop: Writing courses and workshops in New York City.

Courses in California: Writing courses and workshops at the California College of Arts.

Online Writers Groups: Join an online writers group in one of several genres including contemporary fiction, short stories, fantasy and crime.

Inside the Mind Of A Crime Writer: Author interview on YouTube with best selling crime writer, Patricia Cornwell.

100 Best Novels: Writers need to read good books. Check out the 100 best novels of all time, as recommended by The Guardian.

Writing Blunders: An hilarious writers resource. From waking up scenes to head-hopping - several writing blunders you should avoid.

Filmmakers: A huge resource for screenwriting competitions.

How To Write A Haiku: Advice for starting to write this short, popular Japanese form of poetry.

Interactive Plot Developer: Just enter a character, setting and plot and this free tool will automatically generate a plot for you.

Dear Writer: A great letter from John Steinbeck with advice for beginning writers.

Ten Timeless Persuasive Writing Techniques: A brilliant resource for copywriters. Learn the art of persuasive writing from Brian Clark of Copyblogger.

I hope you enjoyed these brilliant resources for writers. Also, if you’d like to read more articles for writers, on this site, check out the related posts below.

Related Reading

What Is Your Responsibility As A Writer?
What Sort Of Freelance Writer Are You?
Do You Want To Make Millions? The Business Of Writing A Novel

Posted by cathlawson | Filed Under Inspiration and Motivation

Comments

47 Responses to “43 Amazing Resources For Writers”

Barbara Swafford on May 8th, 2008 6:26 am

Hi Catherine,

You are a resource queen.

You always come up with such great links. It’s a good thing I have your blog in my reader so I can keep coming back.

Thanks for sharing! The list is awesome.

Barbara Swafford’s last blog post..New Bloggers Are Being Scammed
Scott Sweeney on May 8th, 2008 7:31 am

Once again, you have totally schooled me in how to make an awesome resource

Keep doing what you do, I love reading it and I am sure many other people do as well!

Cheers
Scott

Scott Sweeney’s last blog post..Taking Time to Find Your Voice
Joanna Young on May 8th, 2008 8:32 am

Thanks for a great list of resources Catherine. Gave it a stumble.

And thanks for including my e-book. Glad you found it of value.

Joanna

Joanna Young’s last blog post..Blog Writing Tips from 100 Successful Bloggers
Lillie Ammann on May 8th, 2008 8:52 am

Cath,
You’ve taken up a lot of my time with these great resources, and I’m still not through the whole list.

Thanks for including my post!

Lillie Ammann’s last blog post..Introducing Jesus Christ
Cath Lawson on May 8th, 2008 10:43 am

@ Barbara, Scott, Joanna and Lillie - Glad you liked it. There’s some wonderful resources there including Joanna and Lillie’s. And it’s great that some of these author’s are now doing YouTube interviews. That surprised me a lot.

Cath Lawson’s last blog post..43 Amazing Resources For Writers
James Chartrand - Men with Pens on May 8th, 2008 10:54 am

Woot, thanks for including us on this list! It’s a good one, too. Found some neat things on here.

James Chartrand - Men with Pens’s last blog post..A Tale of Customer Service
cathlawson on May 8th, 2008 11:10 am

Hi James - Glad you liked it. You and Harry should have a go at some of the competitions on there. The Bridport prize and Glimmer Train would be particularly worthwhile.
Shilpan | successsoul.com on May 8th, 2008 3:02 pm

Cath -

Great list. I just dugg the post. This article is invaluable.

Thanks
Shilpan

Shilpan | successsoul.com’s last blog post..3 Guiding Principles to Find a Life Long Purpose
Ian Denny on May 8th, 2008 5:26 pm

Couldn’t resist a stumble. Mainly because I don’t do anything about writing and I should!

There’s lots of cool stuff in there, and like your last resource post, this is one I’ll delve into from my stumble page.

I bet you have some e-books brewing away somewhere?

Ian Denny’s last blog post..Deliberately Displease People For Better Results
Cath Lawson on May 8th, 2008 6:27 pm

Thank you Shilpan - I’m glad you enjoyed it.

Thanks Ian - I’ve been banned from SU - tell you about it later, but I’m betting that you can guess which assholes were responsible. But so far as I know - my posts are still stumbleable.

Re: Ebooks - I have lots of material already written. But I’m trying to work on so many things at ones. Will email you soon - am desperately behind with all correspondence.

Cath Lawson’s last blog post..43 Amazing Resources For Writers
sterling | bizlift on May 8th, 2008 10:08 pm

Nice list Cath. I like the creative writing prompts. Good jump-starting ideas.

sterling | bizlift’s last blog post..Magento - Revolutionary eCommerce for Small Biz
John Hoff on May 9th, 2008 2:33 am

As if I didn’t already have enough to read hehehe. That’s a great list and I’m going to save this to my del.icio.us bookmarks. I’ll be checking these out.

Thanks Cath

John Hoff’s last blog post..Fear Can Ruin Your Business From Within
cathlawson on May 9th, 2008 8:34 am

Thanks Sterling - I like that one too. It could keep you busy for a while.

Thanks John - Think I will join delicious too. StumbleUpon banned me so I lost all my bookmarks.
Friar on May 9th, 2008 3:38 pm

This is great. You’ve summarized all the best sites that would have taken me forever to find! I’m especially interested in the one on how to write an E-book.

I almost feel guitly, that I’m getting all this info for free. Much appreciated!

Friar’s last blog post..8 Random Friar Facts
mark @ mytropicalescape on May 9th, 2008 4:52 pm

Hi Cath - not much else to add, but I just wanted to say thanks for all of the effort that you put into this list!!

Have a GREAT weekend.

mark @ mytropicalescape’s last blog post..Open Source SOCIAL Entrepreneurship and a Guest Post
Joanne on May 9th, 2008 4:54 pm

Thanks so much for taking time to put that together! What a great resource.
Joanne’s last blog post..Children’s Adoption Books
John Hoff on May 9th, 2008 8:19 pm

@Cath - StumbleUpon banned you? How did this happen?

You know, I have an article coming up I’m *planning* on giving you a thank you (it’s not written yet). It’s about what I’ve learned about optimizing your website/blog because I think it was you I have to thank for stumbling one of my posts that made it go viral. That page now has a page rank of 6 thanks to you so uh . . . thanks!

I’m still curious about what happened with StumbleUpon. Care to share?

John Hoff’s last blog post..How To Buy A House Like A Real Estate Investor: Part 4 - Getting Your Closing Costs Covered
Emily on May 9th, 2008 10:10 pm

Thanks for putting this together. My friend is trying to get into online writing, and I can’t wait to show him this.
Mike on May 9th, 2008 10:11 pm

This is a great resource. I’ve been trying to build up my ability to write, especially online, and I’ve been looking for someplace that has them all together. Thanks.

Mike’s last blog post..News: Stop Uwe Boll and Get Free Gum - Its Win-Win
Cath Lawson on May 10th, 2008 3:22 am

Hi Friar - Don’t feel guilty - I like sharing info. Free info I’ve found on the Internet has helped me a lot over the years - so I like to pass on mine. BTW - I’ve been doing a series - it’s more for shorter info products than ebooks, but it starts here: http://cathlawson.com/blog/2008/04/23/the-dirty-little-secrets-of-an-informer/

Hi Mark - Thanks - you have a great weekend too.

Hi Joanne - you’re welcome.

Hi John - Am going to write a post about it, but basically, I wrote something that annoyed a few people and I think they caused problems for me: http://cathlawson.com/blog/2008/04/01/are-you-sick-of-the-stumbleupon-freaks/

They have removed every vote I ever gave. But that is great news that discovering one of your pages helped it go viral. I like helping people who have written something brilliant. I’ll just have to find another way.

Hi Emily - no problem - hope he likes it. And thanks for sharing it with others.

Hi Mike - you’re welcome. I hope it helps.

Cath Lawson’s last blog post..43 Amazing Resources For Writers
John Hoff on May 10th, 2008 6:21 am

@Cath - read the post - yeah, definitely worth banning you over (*John grins in wonder).

So now we get censored on StumbleUpon. Great.

Sorry to hear about all that.

John Hoff’s last blog post..How To Buy A House Like A Real Estate Investor: Part 4 - Getting Your Closing Costs Covered
cathlawson on May 10th, 2008 7:27 am

Hi John - I don’t think it’s so much what I wrote, it was the reaction by the so called anti-spam group. They used a bot to create false votes on the post to make it look as though i did it myself, among other things.
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Kelly@SHE-POWER on May 11th, 2008 1:28 pm

Excellent list of resources. Thanks for that Cath. Now I just need to find the time to read them!

Kelly

Kelly@SHE-POWER’s last blog post..No, I’m Not Dead
Instructify » Blog Archive » Monday by the Numbers on May 12th, 2008 6:14 pm

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Ari on May 22nd, 2008 5:22 pm

At the surface, the list seems more geared to fiction and novel writing than, say, magazine/market writing… but is still useful and includes some links I haven’t seen before. Thanks!
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Arwen Taylor on May 29th, 2008 4:10 am

What a great list of resources. Thanks for taking the time to put this together. Definitely something that will come in handy in the following months. Another good one is AbsoluteWrite.com.

Arwen Taylor’s last blog post..Writing Prompts: Memories of Places
Bisque on May 29th, 2008 6:44 am

What I do worry about in trying to take these classes or publish yourself online is if that someone steals your one or several great ideas and use their resources to publish it themselves and taking the credit. While I’m not sure how good I am at writing, those kinds of things worry me enough that I’d hate to do anything concerning publishing online.
cathlawson on May 30th, 2008 2:43 pm

Hi Kelly - thanks. Hope you’re having a great time in Europe.

Hi Arwen - You’re welcome. I have visited absolutewrite.com and it is excellent too - thanks

Hi Bisque - I think if someone was going to steal your stuff, they’d do it no matter how much you tried to protect yourself.
Antiques on June 5th, 2008 9:01 pm

Great website, it is filled with very helpful links for us writers who need some guidance. Arwen Taylor, thank you for suggesting to visit the website absolutewrite.com. It is a huge help to what I am looking for. Us writers have such a way with expressing ourselves through words. It truly is a beautiful way to go through life.
M.d Tabish Faraz on June 13th, 2008 4:50 am

Quite okay resources actually.

M.d Tabish Faraz’s last blog post..Welcome To WriterTabish.Blogspot.Com!
PlotDog on June 13th, 2008 9:49 pm

Stuff like this makes my writing so much easier. I don’t know how writers got along before people like you started making our lives easier. This is a great thing.

PlotDog’s last blog post..Writers Offering Our Finest - June 6
Natural on July 24th, 2008 9:59 pm

Thanks for this Cath, I bookmarked this post and will make my way through the links.
Natural’s last blog post..As Not Yet Seen On TV
cathlawson on July 24th, 2008 11:08 pm

Hi Valerie - you are welcome. I hope you find some useful resources in there.
What Kind of Writer Are You? on August 25th, 2008 3:01 am

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Mike on September 3rd, 2008 11:17 pm

Hi Cath, picked up your site from a rec on SU, so yes, you can still be ‘found’ there. Terrific resources and thanks for sharing them all.

Mike
http://www.makingdollars4u.com (Affiliate Marketing)
http://www.skillnet-resources.com (HR and Management Consulting)
cathlawson on September 13th, 2008 1:15 pm

Hi Rita - I don’t know why I chose that title. But it might be worthwhile for a novelist to incorporate - especially if it helps them pay less taxes.

Re: Advances, I think it was a 2006 figure for novels. But that was average - you’re above average remember, so you deserve more.
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wilhb81 on November 9th, 2008 12:45 pm

Hi Cath, I found out your blog, when I was reading Joanna’s blog and I’m glad that I did it, as you absolutely have a neat and informative blog here…

Thanks for this great tips, Cath and I’ve already bookmarked it too!

wilhb81’s last blog post..Business one-liners 29
cathlawson on November 9th, 2008 3:36 pm

Hi There Wilhb. Thanks for coming to find me. I love Joanna’s blog too and I’m glad you found these resources useful.
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Jason Cohen on December 30th, 2008 10:14 pm

I almost didn’t write a comment because at this moment there are 43 comments on “43 resources.” I screwed up the magic numbers!

Awesome set of resources. I especially like the “creative writing prompts.” Thanks!

Jason Cohen’s last blog post..Distinguishing constructive criticism from bad business advice
cathlawson on December 30th, 2008 10:32 pm

Hi Wilhb - sorry - I missed this comment. I’m guessing you mean Joanna Young. At least now I know how you found me. Thanks.

Hi Jason - Thanks for still commenting and I’m really glad you enjoyed the resource. The prompts are awesome. They can get you started no matter how unco-operative your brain is being.
miami loan modification on February 28th, 2009 12:49 pm

Awesome post. I always had difficulties in writing posts for my blog. Sometimes it is really painful for me. Hope these resources will help me in improving writing skills. Thanks for the information.

miami loan modification’s last blog post..Miami Florida Loan Modification Assistance
andre on June 16th, 2009 9:42 pm

Hi,
I just started my blog about writing. Even with this tld, but I have more strong will to develop my writing skill after I read this post.

Thanks for sharing…

Regards,
Andre

andre’s last blog post..Writing A Letter of Recommendation