A couple of months ago the inconceivable happened. I lost all my bookmarks. They just disappeared one night while I was sleeping, when I logged on the next day I had no more bookmarks and everything was all wonky. There are ways to get them back but I haven’t yet had a chance to sit down and figure it out and thus, I lost some valuable resources.
Yesterday one of the regulars, Amy Derby, generously shared a couple of markets with another member of this community and it got me thinking. Between all of us we must have quite the arsenal of information. I thought it would be cool if we all shared some of the important resources we use to help us out as freelance writers.
Yes, I lost most of my favorite links, but I have a few to share with you here. I invite you to share yours in the comments. Please note links usually go into moderation so your resources might not appear automatically. Eventually I’ll compile this into a giant list of resources:
These are a few of my favorite writing resources:
- Acronym Finder – Every wonder what that group of initials stands for? No you can find out.
- Library of Congress – Lots to read and do here.
- Preditors & Editors - Plenty of helpful links. FWJ won their “truly useful site” award a couple of years back.
- The Anti-Pedantry Page - Singular use of the word “their” in Jane Austen novels and other places. I have to admit, this is one of my pet peeves too!
- Wordcounter – Need your word count? Enter in the text
- The Grand List of Overused Science Fiction Cliches – I’m not a science fiction writer or reader but found this fun.
- Writer Beware – Anyone who writes for the web should bookmark this resource geared towards educating writers against scams and more.
- Grammar Resources on the Web - From the University of Chicago Writing Program
- The Elements of Style – No writer should be without his Strunk. This is the 1918 edition and it’s probably in your best interest to invest in the more current volume.
- Schoolhouse Rock Lyrics – Sing it with me folks, “Conjunction junction, what’s your function…
- The American Heritage Book of English Usage
- Common Errors in English
- Proofreader Marks – These are sort of an old friend for me. I used them often as an editorial assistant and not to edit my own writing. Sadly, we don’t see them in the online world at all. I’m suddenly feeling old.
- Rules for Commas – I need to read this again.
- A huge list of writing links about words.
- Idea Generators
Your turn: What are your favorite blogs, links or resources for writers?
Go!
PR Newswire for press releases and experts on various industries.
http://media.prnewswire.com/
Darnit, Deb, I JUST cleaned out my bookmarks folder. Guess I will be filling it up again. Thanks for all you do here.
I use the Random Name Generator often:
http://www.behindthename.com/random/
It comes in handy when writing fiction and you start to feel like you’re using the same character names over and over, or you want an ethnically specific name
Unfortunately, I replaced my computer a few months ago when the screen started turning pretty colors. It was charming, really. So I lost all my bookmarks, too. But this is one I use fairly frequently. It can be used to find all the information you could ever need about any college or university in the US. You can search by subject matter or location: http://nces.ed.gov/collegenavigator/
I always kept Copyscape in my bookmarks until recently. About six months ago, I had a long time client vanish without paying me for four press releases and one travel article. So I was using Copyscape to check daily to make sure she didn’t post them (their 5 cent search deal). They never caught them. Then I came across the free plagiarism detection site – http://www.plagiarismdetect.com and ran them as a test to see what I thought of the software. It found all five had been posted back in March when I wrote them. So I wasn’t happy with Copyscape and since then I’ve stuck with plagiarism detect.
Where to start?
Ok, not including places to find jobs:
http://www.LessAccounting.com (for keeping track of business)
http://www.ZohoBusiness.com (for keeping track of projects and contact)
http://www.sxc.hu/ (royalty free images without too much hoop jumping) – MS Office onlin Clipart works good too.
http://www.zyn.com (for grant writers)
http://www.docstoc.com (for templates – usually for ideas or for tweaking)
office.microsoft.com (for Office templates)
http://www.smashingmagazine.com (for design tips and ideas – mostly for things where I’m also the desktop publisher in addition to the writer)
http://www.arcticllama.com/blog (shameless plug
http://www.feedburner.com (make RSS feeds for your site)
http://www.bookmooch.com (use this site to trade in your books for other people’s books – I use it to get new project management book or business books or finance books when I’ve finished reading the one I already had in order to know what clients are referencing)
Whew…back to work…
@Deb:
I must drive you crazy with #4! lol. I don’t know why it seems more natural and simple to use ‘their’ instead of s/he. I honestly hate assigning a gender to any piece, though. To me it seems like whichever gender I use could come across as sexist. (PCers have me paranoid lol)
#5: if you use Microsoft Word you can easily make a word count button for your toolbar so you can just click for total word count (and other info) or you can highlight a section of the text and then click for word count (and other info) of the selected text. If anyone is interested and it is ok, I will post how to do it – or you can email me for it.
I did a small list of links for writers on Vimu (FWJ is on it as well), but I think that might get ad revenue for me if anyone goes there (I am not sure if I am in that program or not), so I will post the links here in a little bit, instead of a link to that list.
Free Tag Generator for Your Text
Free SEO/Keyword Checker
Free Online Plagiarism Checker
Writers Rates Free Online Calculator
Current Average Rates for Writers and Editors
Rate and Bid Info for Writers
All About Blogging on About.com
Freelance Writing at About.com
Accentuate Writers
Editing & Proofreading Hints & Tips
How to Set Your Freelance Writing Rates
Freelance Writing Jobs – YOU ARE HERE lol. It was on my list, too!
I have tons of other great links, but I will stop for now so I don’t have to officially change my name here to “Dani the Verbose”.
By the way, thank you, Deb, for this! I have already bookmarked this in my important writing links folder.
Brian,
Zoho is good. I’ve done some work for their PR firm
What service do you use that holds the bookmarks? My parents were using ATT Yahoo DSL, which keeps the bookmarked sites on their side when the file used to retrieve bookmarks went corrupt or something. I managed to locate and save the file with the data in it, but Yahoo fixed the problem on their end and all was restored before I had bothered to mess with it.
If you are saving favorites in Internet Explorer, the links are saved to a folder on your hard drive. Copying the folder to flash drive lets you take your favorites with you whereever you go, or allows you to swap the info when getting a new computer.
Lots of good links I’m going to have to follow up on.
Phil — I am helping a friend with a press release and am wondering if you have any recommendations of FREE online distribution sites? I know there are a lot of them out there (I currently have a list of 20) but am wondering if you know of any that are better than others?
A few resources:
100 Excellent Free WordPress Themes at Smashing Magazine
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2008/01/08/100-excellent-free-high-quality-wordpress-themes/
Now free in ebook form, The Street Smart Writer: Self Defense Against Sharks and Scams in the Writing World by Jenna Glatzer and Daniel Steven
http://www.wowio.com/viewer/reader.asp?nBookId=2646&rnd=303.379737537101
Freelance Switch’s hourly rates calculator:
http://freelanceswitch.com/rates/
Google Keywords Lookup
https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal
Cute PDF for turning docs into pdf (I used the paid version, but they have a free one)
http://www.cutepdf.com/
Here are some links in no particular order:
Freelance Writing Organization-Int’l
http://www.fwointl.com/
Writing-World.com
http://www.writing-world.com/
HowStuffWorks
http://www.howstuffworks.com/
Infoplease
http://www.infoplease.com
Refdesk.com
http://refdesk.com/
firstwriter.com
http://www.firstwriter.com/
snopes.com 25 Hottest Urban Legends
http://www.snopes.com/info/top25uls.asp
Writing Fix
http://www.writingfix.com/
HistoryNet.com
http://www.historynet.com/
invoice journal
http://www.invoicejournal.com/
free-minder.com
http://www.free-minder.com/
Deb, what browser are you using? The same thing happened to me using Firefox – one day all my bookmarks disappeared.
They’re not actually gone though, in fact, it’s pretty easy to get them back. (If it is Firefox assuming you’re using a PC and not a Mac.)
Look in C:\Documents and Settings\username\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\xxx.default\bookmarkbackups and import the latest backup.
Hope this helps
Jenn
Here are some writing resources in no particular order:
Freelance Writing Organization-Int’l
http://www.fwointl.com/
Writing-World.com
http://www.writing-world.com/
HowStuffWorks
http://www.howstuffworks.com/
Infoplease
http://www.infoplease.com
Refdesk.com
http://refdesk.com/
firstwriter.com
http://www.firstwriter.com/
snopes.com 25 Hottest Urban Legends
http://www.snopes.com/info/top25uls.asp
Writing Fix
http://www.writingfix.com/
HistoryNet.com
http://www.historynet.com/
invoice journal
http://www.invoicejournal.com/
free-minder.com
http://www.free-minder.com/
Thanks
For articles with great tips, classes, a good message board, an editorial calendar, freelancer parties, and more: Mediabistro.com
For some cool, free virtual classes on travel writing: http://blog.viscape.com/viscape-university/
For masthead contact info: http://mediaphonebook.com/index.php?title=Magazines
For asking and answering questions related to writing and editing: http://www.linkedin.com/answers/browse/marketing-sales/writing-editing/MAR_WED (really useful for building contacts, too)
Awesome links, friends. I can’t wait for this weekend when I have time to pour myself a big fat mug of coffee and visit all these links.
@Jenn – I only use Firefox. One of the regulars did give me some instructions for replacing my bookmarks but I haven’t yet had the time to follow his advice.
Coffee Break for Writers E-zine (Shamless plug
)
http://www.coffeebreakforwriters.com/
Duotrope’s Digest (Great resource for fiction writers)
http://www.duotrope.com/index.aspx
Nielsen/NetRatings
http://www.netratings.com/
The Free Library
http://www.thefreelibrary.com/
I have started doing more academic writing, and have come to love this site:
http://www.easybib.com
It creates bibliographies in the proper format. All you do is click what source you are using and then a template comes up and you fill it out and then it gets listed in the proper format. For each new citation, you just click on the source and enter the data. When all is done, you have a perfectly formatted bibliography/works cited page.