Free Tools and Sites for Writers

Wednesday, November 28th, 2007 at 12:26 PM | Category: Business, Language, Links, Meryl's Notes Blog, Tech, Writing 10 comments

Updated: 16 November 2010 (100+ resources)

I had planned on putting this list up ages ago, but kept adding more. It could take a long time to capture many resources, so this is a living entry that I’ll update as soon as I get new resources.

Blogs

  1. About Freelance Writing
  2. All Freelance Writing
  3. Be the Story
  4. The Blood-Red Pencil
  5. Bob Bly
  6. Book Marketing Bestsellers
  7. The Book Sistah
  8. C. Hope Clark
  9. CatalystBlogger
  10. Christina Katz
  11. Confident Writing
  12. Copyblogger
  13. The Copywriter Underground
  14. The Copywriting Maven
  15. Copywriting That Sells High Tech
  16. The Creative Penn
  17. Crime Fiction Dossier
  18. Daily Writing Tips
  19. Diary of a Wordsmith
  20. Evil Editor
  21. Freelance Parent
  22. Freelance Writing
  23. Freelance Writing Jobs
  24. Get Paid to Write Online
  25. Grow Your Writing Business
  26. How Not to Write
  27. I’d Rather Be Writing
  28. Inkwell Editorial
  29. Jane in Progress
  30. Joel Falconer
  31. Joe Wikert’s Publishing 2020 Blog
  32. JohnAugust.com
  33. PoeWar
  34. Macabre Ink
  35. Mad Young Thing
  36. Men with Pens
  37. Michael Hyatt
  38. Mike’s Writing Workshop
  39. Newbie’s Guide to Publishing
  40. Paul Conley on trade journalism
  41. Publishing Careers
  42. Problogger
  43. Robust Writing
  44. Quiet Rebel Writer
  45. Quips and Tips for Freelance Writers
  46. Rachelle Gardner
  47. The Renegade Writer
  48. Remarkable Communication
  49. Rogue Ink
  50. Sites and Soundbytes: Library blog that began as a list of cool places online now features many resources and online references that would prove useful to writers.
  51. StoneWriter
  52. Storytellers Unplugged
  53. The Struggling Writer
  54. There Are No Rules
  55. Tumblemoose
  56. Urban Muse
  57. The Wealthy Freelancer
  58. The Web-Savvy Writer
  59. Web Writing Info
  60. The Well-Fed Writer
  61. WOW! Women on Writing
  62. Words for Hire
  63. Words on the Water
  64. Word Sell Blog
  65. Write from Home
  66. Writer Beware
  67. Writer Dad
  68. Writer’s Digest Writing Blogs
  69. A Writer’s Words, an Editor’s Eye
  70. Writer’s Helper
  71. Writer’s Notes
  72. Write to Done
  73. Write Well Me
  74. The Writing Journey
  75. The Writing Life
  76. Writing on the Web
  77. Writing White Papers Blog
  78. Written Road

Resources

  1. 100 posts and articles worth link love: Great selection of articles and content related to writing, business, blogging, and freelancing.
  2. 150 Writing Resources: Organized by categories.
  3. A to Z of Alternative Words [pdf file]: Why “utilize” when a simple “use” will do?
  4. AbiWord: Open source Word
  5. About Freelance Writing: Job postings, articles, and more.
  6. AbsoluteWrite: The first place I recommend to wanna be writers. Of course, it’s great for experienced writers.
  7. Alex Catalogue of Electronic Texts: Collection of about 14,000 “classic” public domain documents from American and English literature as well as Western philosophy.
  8. American vs. British Grammar: Differences go beyond color vs. colour, optimize vs. optimise.
  9. Authors of Historical Fiction resource
  10. Bartleby: Resource has been around for a long-time that contains reference and verses for writers, researchers, and the “intellectually curious.”
  11. A Beginner’s Guide to the Business Side of Freelancing: From creating a business plan to dealing with taxes.
  12. CARRIE: Internet’s first full-text online electronic library.
  13. Community Mottos and Nicknames. Great info for stories and inspiration for names.
  14. Confusing Words: Over 3000 troublesome words.
  15. Digital Library of the Commons: An archive of full-text articles, papers, and dissertations; the Comprehensive Bibliography of the Commons; a Keyword Thesaurus, and links to relevant reference sources on the study of the commons.
  16. Disability Writes: Site to help people with disabilities overcome barriers in getting support and encouragement to write.
  17. e-write: newsletter, courses, articles, tools, resources, challenge.
  18. Etymology: Study of word origins.
  19. For Copywriters Only: Articles and newsletter.
  20. The Free Dictionary: Dictionary, encyclopeida, thesaurus, and more. Huge resource.
  21. Freelance Folder: More about the business of freelancing, but writers benefit greatly.
  22. Freelance Writing Success: Articles and resources.
  23. FundsForWriters: Articles, newsletters, and more.
  24. Fun with Words: Wordplay
  25. Google Book Search: Access thousands of books based on your keywords. How much you get depends on the book and its copyright.
  26. Guide to Grammar and Writing: Guidelines and resources for writing proposals.
  27. Little Known Online Research Sites: List of online research sites and apps.
  28. Long Story Short: Ezine with book reviews, excerpts, interviews, articles, poetry, writing school.
  29. Luciferous Logolepsy: Collection of obscure English words.
  30. Manuscript Analyzer can help dump those trouble words and phrases. It looks for frequently-used words and “identify junk phrases, ‘frequent offender’ word patterns, and adverbs.”
  31. NewsTrust.net: Discover good journalism based on quality not popularity.
  32. OnceWritten.com: Introduces new fiction writers, contains a community, and provides resources for contests and marketing.
  33. ParaPublishing: Newsletter and resources.
  34. Phrase Finder: “Search beginnings and endings of phrases.”
  35. Publication Coach Newsletter: Power Writing newsletter provides quick tips.
  36. Publishing Central: Find articles from around the Web on just about every topic related to publishing.
  37. The Purdue Online Writing Lab (OWL): Superb resources covering writing, research, grammar, and MLA and APA style.
  38. ResearchCopyright.com: Learn about copyright law in simple language.
  39. Research Guides from New York Public Library: New York Public Library research guides in alphabetical order by topic.’
  40. That White Paper Guy: Articles, FAQ, and other great white paper writing resources from Gordon Graham.
  41. Top 25 Books for Writers and Writing-related Topics: As voted by writers.
  42. The Ultimate Writing Productivity Resources: Top ten lists for free apps, online apps, bookmarks, communities.
  43. Visuwords: Online graphical dictionary.
  44. The Well-Fed Writer: Site behind the books of the same name. Sign up for the free newsletter.
  45. Writing for Dollars: Articles and newsletter
  46. WhitePaperSource: Excellent resource for white paper writers.
  47. Worldwide Freelance Writer: Markets, newsletter, and articles.
  48. Writer Magazine: Not only a print magazine, but also has lots of online articles.
  49. Writing White Papers: Everything white papers including a community, blog, links, and newsletter.
  50. WritingSpirit.com: Resources, strategies and support for writers.

Tools

  1. About Writing Tools: Best writing tools on the Web.
  2. Abbreviations: Search and browse abbreviations.
  3. Anagram Genius
  4. Cliche Finder: Identify and kill cliches.
  5. ClicheSite: Cliches, euphemesms, and figures of speech.
  6. Chris Pound’s Name Generation Page: Includes fantasie, parodies, and more links.
  7. The Editorium Freebies: Tools and templates for Microsoft Word.
  8. The Free Dictionary: Includes English, Medical, Legal, Financial, and Computer Dictionaries, Thesaurus, Acronyms, Idioms, Encyclopedia, and a Literature Reference Library.
  9. Freelance Switch Hourly Rate Calculator: How much should you make an hour? Complete this form to find out.
  10. Global Acronyms: Search for acronyms.
  11. Good Keywords: Find the right keywords.
  12. Google Docs: Online-based word processor
  13. Instant Anagrams
  14. Instant Rhymes
  15. Microsoft Word Shortcuts: Exactly as it sounds.
  16. The Naque: Tools for coming up with names.
  17. NetLingo: Online text and jargon.
  18. The Passivator: Eliminate passive phrases.
  19. Phrase Finder: Find phrases and their meanings.
  20. Reference.com: Dictionary, thesaurus, encyclopedia, reference material Wikipedia and Lexico’s On This Day.
  21. Rhymezone: Tool for finding words that rhyme. Also includes other resources such as Shakespeare, quizzes, quotations, Mother Goose, and famous documents.
  22. Scrivener Gold: Helps writers organize projects — for Macs. Apple Matters review gives it a rating of 9 out of 10. Scrivener requires a Mac running OS X 10.4 (Tiger).
  23. Seventh Sanctum: Name generators (look on the left).
  24. Text Block Writer: A virtual index card program.
  25. ThinkFree Office: Free “Office” application.
  26. Tools for Creating Ideas: Nice list of ideas of what you can do to brainstorm and come up with new things.
  27. U.S. Newspapers: Find Web sites for US newspapers.
  28. VocabTest.com: Boost your word power.
  29. Wordsmith: Love the site’s anagram server. Also has A Word a Day, Wordsmith Chat, Wordserver and more.
  30. World Newspapers, Magazines, and New Sites in English: Nice resource that sorts resources by categories.
  31. WordWeb: Thesaurus and dictionary accessed with one click.
  32. Zoho Writer and other apps

dp seal trans 16x16 Free Tools and Sites for WritersCopyright secured by Digiprove © 2010 Meryl Evans Tags: , , ,

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