*AUGUST: Online Resources for Writers *

1. The EditMinion

Remember Write or Die? Well Dr Wicked has made another online tool for writers called the “Edit Minion”. 

“EditMinion helps you refine your writing by searching your text for some common grammatical, spelling and diction mistakes that spellcheck won’t catch. It looks for adverbs, bad dialogue attribution, commonly misspelled words and ending a sentence with a preposition. It will also count how many times a given type of mistake is found.

It’s obviously no replacement for a human copy-editor but it will give you an idea of what areas you might need to focus on revising in your writing.”

http://writeordie.com/2010/12/introducing-the-editminion/

2. The Bookshelf Muse

The Bookshelf Muse is a wonderful blog that has many resources for writers. My particular favorites (listed on the sidebar) are the Character Traits Thesaurus, Emotion Thesaurus, Setting Thesaurus, Weather & Earthly Phenomena Thesaurus, Color textures and Shapes Thesaurus, and Symbolism Thesaurus.

The amounts of things I’ve learned from this blog since I’ve found are phenomenal.  Aside from the Thesaurus’, just going through their regular posts you’ll learn so many great tips about writing.  You can tell that the people who run the blog really take their time with each and every post that they make. It truly is amazing.

I have it first on my Favorites Bar if that tells you how much I adore this blog. :)

http://thebookshelfmuse.blogspot.com/

3. What is High Concept?

Have you ever wondered what High Concept is? Why people keep talking about it?

Read this article here over at Wilde Life:

http://wildelori.blogspot.com/p/high-concept-writing.html

Have YOU found any helpful articles on writing this month? Please share ‘em if you do.

*AUGUST: Online Resources for Writers *

How I Came to Be A Writer

It’s August Already?

I woke up today and it was suddenly August, which meant that there was only one more month left of summer. I’m planning on cramming in as much writing as possible before school starts again.

Also, tomorrow we’re having a Trailer Launch Party for the release of the trailer for Tell Me A Secret by Holly Cupala. We’re giving away prizes so come by if you want a chance to win!

Who actually knows from childhood that they wanted to be a writer?

At first I wanted to be a doctor. My aunts and uncles were doctors who wore white long coats and sported a cool Stethoscope around their necks. They got to help people hands on and were getting paid for it. I wanted to be just like them, to wear the same coat, and take care of people in the hospital. When I eventually moved away from the idea of being a doctor I wanted to be a poet. I was fascinated by Shel Siverstein’s poetry and started writing many of my own. By the end of the 4th grade I had 5 notebooks filled with poems on the most random topics, all of them scrawled in my messy middle school handwriting (I could hardly read any of it now).

A year later I had to do a project in school in which we were supposed to write a 10 chapter story. Each chapter had a mission to accomplish. For ex. chapter one would be to introduce the character and the conflict. We had a months time to have the book completed, and typed. Within that month my mind wondered a lot farther than it ever had before, and with every word I wrote I felt the happiest I’ve ever been in my life. I always loved reading books, but actually writing them was an entirely different feeling. I ended up writing more than the recommended chapters so when we all had to bring in our final copies mine was the longest.

That same day my teacher had called me to her desk while the others left for recess. I was scared. Our advanced English teacher was a little stingy and she only called people over to her desk when they were in trouble. She told me to stand beside her and I noticed that she was holding my story in her hands. A small tear escaped her eye and I was beginning to get a bit worried. She asked me if I really wrote it and I replied 'yes'. She told me how it was the best story she had ever read from this project. Then she said to me, “You're going to be an author some day”. The words she had told me were serious, and not at all told in a joking manner. I took me a long while to realize that she really meant it. I mean, I was in the 5th grade-my writing couldn't have been good enough to make a teacher cry, epecially one that hardly showed any emotion at all. It was then that I decided that I wanted to be a writer; that I loved the way it made me feel to see my made-up world come to life on the pages in my notebook.

So how did you decide that you wanted to be a writer?

How I Came to Be A Writer