I have found some good sites for writers recently, and I thought I would share some of them:

Duotrope Digest is a free site with market listings (many small press markets) - they've got stats such as how long the average wait for a response is, the ratio of acceptances to rejections, etc. The listings are easily searchable by pay scale, genre, whatever you want. Also if you become a member of the site, you can keep track of your submissions with a submission tracker, which I've found useful.

The Free Dictionary. I use online dictionaries quite often to look up words, both because I am lazy (you have to get up, and drag the dictionary off the shelf, as opposed to a few clicks), and because many of the words I want to look up are not in the dictionaries that I own. I just recently discovered this site, which also has word games. The entries have an icon to click and hear the word pronounced. (I know it's not always a good idea in writing to use a $50 word you know just because you know it when there is a $5 word that will do the job, but I'm a word geek, and I enjoy learning new words, useless or not.)

Free Rice. Another vocab-building site. This is a game, multiple choice answers to choose from to define a given word, and it automatically adjusts to your vocabulary level, getting harder the more you answer correctly. Plus, for each correct answer you give, rice is donated to programs for the elimination of world hunger.

Hi, P&P Friends!
Last night's critique meeting was amazing. I had a hard time going to sleep after I got home because I was so encouraged. DJ asked for permission prior to the meeting then handed my story, "Singing To the Cows" to the group for critiquing. We used guidelines that helped us be effective -- yes, I critiqued it myself! The beginning comments were uplifting and the suggestions for improvements will help me have a much better story. I learned new writing terms throughout the evening as well. ;-) I felt good about the whole experience being with people that care about me as a writer and their encouragement. I know you will have a good experience as well if you choose to let this group critique your works. (Don't know if you can tell but I sure tried to implement some of those new ideas you planted in my head!)
Looking forward to more editing -- can ya believe it?
Brenda

Hey writing gang!
I'm pretty sure I'll be able to make it to the meetings this summer, starting in June! I'm looking forward to it. Just wanted to let ya'll know!
Stephanie

I promised you some links recently. OK, here they are.

For you novelists and story writers, About.com has a page on Fiction Writing. There are a lot of useful articles there, and some advertising. I found it worthwhile.

For Children's writers Write4Kids.com has a lot to sell, but between the for sale links there is still a lot of free information. I have found them very helpful. The Purple Crayon is a similar site done by an editor. I've used articles from both these sites to prepare for our meetings.

For people writing family stories and memoirs, you may like Creative Nonfiction, a site that publishes on online magazine. (They do take submissions.) My favorite is the page with Essays on the Art and Craft of Creative Nonfiction. I plan to read one of these articles every day. One of the coolest articles I have ever read about journalism is The Fact Behind the Facts, or How You Can Get It All Right and Still Get It All Wrong by Philip Gerard. I just found this website today, so I can't tell you much more about it except that I have great expectations of finding a lot of good information.

Diane L. sent me a link for The Writer's Nook.

Thank you Solard for the link you put in your last post.

Everyone please continue post what you find and why you like it for the rest of us.

Let me know what you find helpful.

That was a really good meeting this morning, aside from the sensation that we were almost missing some limbs because of our members who couldn't be there! <> Come baaaack!!

Here is the link that I mentioned: http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2004/09/de-gustibus-and-how-to-reply-to-bad.asp (I'm crossing my fingers it works) Background, for those that weren't at the meeting, in a nutshell: Anne Rice got uppity on Amazon.com at the critics (haters!) who posted not-so-nice reviews of her book "Memnoc": the mumbledy-something (sorry! -can't remember the rest of the title --anyway, the last in her Lestat series). Fans of Neal Gaiman (a popular sci-fi writer) comment on his blog and ask him for his take on her Response. This is his blog-answer. Scroll about half-way down to get his thoughts on that. I think it's very good advice for us as we approach our whole nail-biting critique sessions!

Oh, and upon further reflection... I'm actually glad that lady had her half of that cell phone conversation during our meeting -- I'm excited at the lessons I can learn from my gut response of "HOWRUDE!!!111!!!" in learning to use EVERYTHING as a "prompt."

(Thanks, DJ ;-)

April is National Poetry Month. Robert Lee Brewer has a blog with Writer's Digest called "Poetic Asides". He has made a write a poem-a-day challenge in April. Don't worry about being behind if you haven't seen it before. You can start now, and you can even write poems for previous days if you like. This link Poetic Asides will take you to the current day, the previous link explains the poetry challenge. Have fun!

New look. Let me know what you think of the changes in color. (Just click on the comments bar below this post to share your opinion.)

There are also two new features. One is a place to post favorite links. We can change these from time to time if it gets too full. The other is a place for members to post blog links or member's web pages. Just email me any link you want to have posted, let me know what name you want to give it, and tell me which category it goes in. I will try to oblige you. If it doesn't show up within a week, check with me to be sure I got the email.

Again, another GREAT quote by C.S. Lewis. I love it!!! SO true!!!

Oh, it was HILARIOUS to see the looks on all you guys faces last night when DJ said,"Now, this is my pet story, so tell me something good about it." I'm still rotfl at the memory of the silence and the expressions of horror on nearly everyone's face because most of us had jumped in with almost cruel abandon, determined to not miss one problem, completely forgetting that we were also to look for what we liked about the story. ;D I'm not likely to forget it. (For those of you who weren't there, DJ didn't actually write the story that we were critiquing. DJ just threw in that twist on purpose to remind us that critiquing is not about just finding what's wrong in a piece.)

I've started a blog of devotions. You are welcome to visit the page if you like. It is at http://jeremiah17.blogspot.com/. You'll have to paste the address in since this section of the blog doesn't put in links. (Or else I don't know how to put them in.)
I'm looking forward to seeing everyone Tuesday.

Voila! The blog is updated! Please let me know if there is anything else that ya'll want changed...
Also, we can:

• choose who can see the blog. Options are anyone (what it's set on now) , members only (ya'll) or only people we choose. What do we want?
• change background colors & text colors - is there a specific color that we want our background to be besides white?

See ya'll!

Stephanie