Due to recovery from illness – despite that lovely trip to the ocean! – I am still planning the next set of blog entries. I try to do a bit of research for each, especially if they are focused on world-building, since providing evidence and/or resources is always helpful for a writer.
My recovery however has left me with less time to assemble these entries. It’s also left me with less time in general. As I am taking care with my health, I am also doing my best to stay ahead in my university classes, and making notes of good blog posts in my handwritten journal. Now it’s taking those ideas and transferring them here.
In the meantime, what are programs or resources you find useful for writing music or stories/novels or poetry?
I fancy yWriter by Spacejock, which has an excellent way of organizing larger works by scenes. This is especially helpful for me since lately I’ve taken to writing my longer works in smaller segments without any transitional material. With yWriter, I can write these scenes, rearrange them as needed so that it’s in a coherent order, and then I can add the transitional material (if its needed at all). A handy little tool this is.
Outside of that program, I also use OpenOffice or Word 2003 and a plethora of writing books.
As for the writing books, these are the ones I keep on my shelves:
Grammatically Correct by Anne Stilman
What Would Your Character Do? by Ann and Eric Maisel
The 3 AM Epiphany by Brian Kiteley
Dictionary Flip
If You Want To Write
World Building by Stephen Gillet
Write: Overcome Writers Block Period by Karen E. Peterson
The Encyclopedia of Magical Creatures
Worlds of Wonder: How to Write Science Fiction
How to Sell Your Book on Amazon
Rhyming Dictionary
Roget’s Thesaurus
I also have two years worth of Writing Digest magazines, which is one of the most helpful writing magazines I’ve ever come across. Lots of nifty articles.
Another useful magazine for me is Scientific American and Discover, both of which are science based magazines and unrelated to writing. I read these to help keep me updated with science research and to generate ideas for my world-building. Both magazines are for the “common person,” so don’t feel like it’s over your head just because it’s about science! Both are fun to read, well written, fully researched, and easily accessible magazines about science. However, as of right now, I’m only subscribed to Scientific American.
This is just my resources for writing. I have a total of 125 books on my bookshelf ranging from science fiction, to poetry, to textbooks, to non-fiction, to young adult novels. I try to keep my collection fairly diverse.
Reshaping Reality 
You are a professional writer, Amber. Now learn how to market your work.
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That’s the toughest part. Oh, I forgot a book that’s on my book shelf – the one Joy gave me in a present: How to market your book on Amazon.
If I’m careful, I could self publish there and take the advice in that book, but they have terrible terms, which have left me dancing around trying them for self-publishing. Since if you go that route, you really need to market yourself in as many places as is plausible, but Amazon has recently been trying to change its terms so that you can only market there and no where else. It’s trying to turn itself into a monopoly at the same time it’s limiting the author from using any other resources.
Traditional publishing is a whole other bandwagon. So far, it seems easier to query an agent and then the agent can pitch my book to the publisher, and we can go from there.
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