Online Writing Resources

Courtesy of fangol

I've never been very good at reading books on writing. I'm not sure why, but I have a hard time making it through them. There are a few that were definitely worth reading: Self-Editing for Fiction Writers, Save the Cat, The Chicago Manual of Style, The Emotion Thesaurus, and Spunk and Bite (a livelier and interesting take on Strunk and White's Elements of Style). Bird by Bird is another I haven't gotten around to yet, but have heard nothing but good things about. And, of course, I would love a complete set of The Oxford English Dictionary. (I am a word geek and proud. :p)

But even though I have a hard time sitting down with writing books, I have a few online resources that I would have a hard time doing without.

For pesky grammar questions, I head straight to Grammar Girl or the Purdue Online Writing Lab. I also google my writing question--especially if it deals with whether or not to hyphenate words or if it's a word I know but can't remember how to spell. Edittorrent is also an awesome grammatical resource.

If I'm looking for links to industry news, I check here on Fridays for the Publishing Pulse. Stina Lindenblatt's Friday round up is especially awesome as is Cynsations. I also check out Porter Anderson's Writing on the Ether every Thursday and The Passive Voice every day. Kris Rusch's Thursday posts are also excellent if you're interested in writing contracts. Twitter chats can also be especially useful--like #yalitchat, #mglitchat, #kidlitchat, etc. (Full disclosure, I'm a co-founder of #mglitchat.)

For writing tips, I enjoy author Patricia C. Wrede's blog, The Secret Story Lair (focuses on analyzing episodic serial fiction, and David Farland's Daily Kick. The Writing Excuses podcasts are also excellent, as is The Bookshelf Muse.

What about you? What are some of your favorite online writing resources?

Danyelle Leafty| @danyelleleafty writes YA and MG fantasy. She is the author of The Fairy Godmother Dilemma series (Catspell, Firespell, Applespell, and Frogspell), and Slippers of Pearl, and can be found on her blog. She can also be found on Wattpad.