Five essential writers resources

Having spent the last several weeks planning out a huge writers resource, based around several seed blogs, I began to think about the ‘essential’ things a writer needs to succeed, and where to find them, or parts of them online.

1) Peristence.  Its cheezy, its flat out annoying sometimes, and just occassionally its the hardest thing in the world to do, but if you’re going to take your writing seriously – and expect others to do the same, you have to apply yourself to it - daily.
The resource to help achieve this – http://wakeupwriting.com
Katie-Anne Gustafsson runs Wake Up writing with the goal of giving writers a prompt every weekday.  Best of all though, she also archives the old ones, so if you’re having a day of struggling, check out a random selection of her posts!

2) Information.  If you aren’t an informed and well read writer, you’ll eventually find yourself either running out of things to write about (even the most exciting life is underpinned by understanding social niceties, laws, and the basics of any society – whilst reading per se might not help that, its a fair bet that unless you live on an isolated hillside, you’ll read and be informed.  You’re reading this right now, aren’t you?
The resource to give you more reading material – Google feed reader.  Set it up, and read all of the things that interest you!

3) A platform – whether you’re a fiction writer, just getting started, or you’re a vet of the scene, you should have your own website.  Find a host, put up a blog and have a blast!

The resource to achieve this – Hosting for writers

4) Connection to other writers – though it’s not ‘essential’ for success, because it won’t make or break your carreer, it might stop YOU from breaking your carreer and give you people to talk to whilst writing.  Writing lists, boards and more range from a small mailing list that gets a couple of posts a week to full fledged writers sites that give you everything.

The resource for your connections – Favorite writing sites

5)SELL! – Whether you’re writing articles, novels, poetry, prose, short fiction, micro fiction, memoirs, flash, factual, creative non fiction, multimedia or any other form of writing, eventually, you need to get it out there. 

The resource to push your work – Duotrope – search the market listings!

No matter what you choose to do, where, and when, build a list of your favorite resources and work with them.  Once you’ve got a comfort zone, you’ll find that you don’t feel quite so lost and can get on with work without procrastinating, or worrying about the next step.

Have you got any you would like to share?