Sounds Interesting . . .

As a “writer” who is also web savvy, I thought that I would share some links for anyone wanting to write their own story/book.

Okay, I want to write, but what do I USE to write?

OpenOffice.Org – Open Office is an open source, free software program comparable to Microsoft Office. It has a powerful word processor that allows you to export to PDFs, a very useful feature. This is the program I use to write every one of my stories.

yWriter – Another free program. I haven’t used this, but it’s apparently designed to make novel writing easy to organize. Might want to check this out.

Abiword – A free word possessor. Supports numerous plugins to extend functionality.

Sweet, now I’ve got the tools to begin writing. But how about tools to help me with the actual story?

Behind the Name – THE site to go to for names. This site includes an extensive library of name meanings and origins as well as a very nice name generator. There are loads more features.

Character Name Generator – Strictly just a random name generator, but includes links to other naming tools.

Fantasy Name Generator – Another random name generator, but with a few more features. You can indicate serious, fun, or specialized names (such as if you want a Japanese name).

Latin Word List – Need to find a cool name in Latin? Check this out. This gives you Latin words and their meanings.

Clich� Finder – Looking for a clich� for some reason? Boom. Use this site.

Internet Anagram Server – An anagram is a word or set of words you can get from another. Clint Eastwood, for instance, is an anagram of Old West Action. This site gives you a list of anagrams from whatever you type into the search box.

Answers.com – Answers.com gives you free access to 4 million topics from over 100 dictionaries, encyclopedias and much more… Very useful for research for your book.

Del.icio.us – Delicious is an online bookmarking tool. This site is excellent for keeping track of your research links by use of tags. If you use Firefox, there is a very easy to use extension that’ll automatically bookmark your page to your Delicious account.

Zotero – Zotero is a Firefox extension that helps you keep track of the research you perform and can even export a bibliography if needed. Much like a bookmark manager, Zotero can save links to web pages you find valuable to your story. You can also manage multiple projects.

Writer’s Resource Center – List of articles to assist in writing stories and poetry.

I need inspiration…

Pandora – If you can write and listen to music as I can, Pandora is an excellent source to turn to. It plays music according to what it thinks you’ll like. You just feed it a band name or song and it does the rest.