Kelly McCullough August 11th 2008

Writers Resources

One of my non-writing but writing-related hobbies is indexing. I know that sounds a little strange and off topic, but bear with me for a moment. In this case, it’s actually quite strongly related to writing. There are a number of excellent blogs by professionals in the publishing world that offer writing and publishing advice. I’m going to mention three here:

1) Making Light the group blog run by the Nielsen Haydens of Tor editorial fame. It is not primarily a writing or publishing blog but it has dispatched tons of valuable advice on those topics.

2) Miss Snark is the no-longer-updating blog of an anonymous literary agent who for several years dispensed enormous quantities of useful advice on how to deal with agents and other publishing matters. There’s nothing new being added at this point but her archives are a treasure trove.

3) Wyrdsmiths is the group blog of my writers group which includes four professional writers and several more who are very likely to make their first large press sales in the next 1-3 years. I’ll admit to a certain bias for the Wyrdsmiths blog because I help write it, but I think there’s a lot of good advice on writing there.

So what do these blogs have in common, and how does this relate to indexing? All three of these blogs are sites for which I have constructed writer-oriented indices. They’re organized topically in categories like: Action, Character, Dialogue, Plot Structure and Outlines, Voice, World. Or: Agent Information- Where to Find, Agents: What to Ask/Know Before You Sign, Being a Good Client/Client Agent Relationships.

I’m going to put the links in below and hope that some of you might find the indices of some value. There are also links to the indices from the the Wyrdsmiths front page on the top of the right side. If you do find this useful, you might want to check back there once in a while to see what else has been added to the list.

Wyrdsmiths Index
Miss Snark Index
Making Light Writers Index
Special Bonus Making Light General Index

I won’t be able to respond to posts here for a couple of days as I’m going to be off net when this goes up, but I will definitely check back in and make comments and answer questions around the 17th or 18th.

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