My Favorite Writing Resources

Hello, friend, and welcome back to Blonde Girl Writing, where I talk about writing, God, and reading! Today, I wanted to share some of my favorite writing resources, most of which are completely free! Also, keep in mind that all of these are online. And with that, let's dive in!

1: Scrivener

Scrivener is a word processor that you can get as an app for your computer. It's immensely helpful for keeping multiple documents organized, rather than having them all scattered around or on one giant document. There are also fun features like word count goals, creating a synopsis for every document, creating comments and footnotes directly on the page, and a compiling feature that downloads your draft into almost any kind of manuscript format you could want. Scrivener is not free--it's $59.99 to buy a license. But this is the only fee you pay, so if you know you'll use Scrivener a lot (like I do!) it's definitely worth the investment.

Free alternatives to Scrivener would be Google Docs and Microsoft Word.

2: Story Embers

Story Embers is a website dedicated to helping writers. They have tons of helpful articles, a podcast, places where you can submit stories and poems, and even free downloadable guides! I'd highly recommend looking through their blog and signing up for the newsletter, as both are extremely helpful. And the best part is, Story Embers is completely free!

3: FightWrite

FightWrite is another website for authors, focused solely on fighting and combat. There's a huge post index with dozens of articles about writing fights correctly, adrenaline, punching, firearms, how to show a character's fear and anxiety while fighting, and more! If you're like me and you know basically nothing about fighting, FightWrite is a fantastic resource.

4: The Most Dangerous Writing App

This one is kind of self-explanatory--the Most Dangerous Writing App is a writing app where you set a timer to write for a certain number of minutes. The only problem is, if you stop writing for too long, you lose all of your progress. It's pretty helpful to keep you motivated or if you have a first draft that you want to pound out. I'd recommend the Most Dangerous Writing App if you just want to sit down and write something. And, if you have no idea what to write, you can also get it to generate a random prompt for you! Just be careful not to hesitate for too long.

5: BabyNames.com

This one is for all of my fellow writers out there who love to overthink coming up with good character names. I love using BabyNames.com to look up names with specific meanings, unique names, and even last names! BabyNames.com has a huge database, and any names that you can't find there can always be looked up elsewhere.

6: NaNoWriMo

If you've been an author for any length of time, you probably have heard of NaNoWriMo, or National Novel Writing Month. NaNoWriMo is a challenge where writers set a goal to write 50,000 words in one month during November. It's great motivation if you're struggling to write, and there's a huge community to help cheer you on! (I will note, please be careful when interacting with people on NaNoWriMo. They've recently had issues with moderators and NaNoWriMo users, especially children. I know they've taken action to resolve these issues, but please be careful online and exercise caution.) Plus, at the end of the month, it feels so good to have written 50,000 words in just 30 days! NaNoWriMo even gives you a little award .pdf and a chance to buy fun winner merch!

7: Abbie Simmons

You might have seen her around YouTube, but if not, let me fill you in: Abbie Simmons is a YouTuber who posts fantastic writing videos. She's a great resource if you prefer to watch a video than read an article, and with videos, you can always speed them up, slow them down, and pause them to take notes. And you're going to want to take notes! In addition to her writing videos, Abbie also has great immersive writing sessions to get you in the mood with ambient sounds, music, and backgrounds!

8: Grammarly

You've probably heard of or seen an ad for Grammarly somewhere before. And though it can be annoying at times, it's a great resource when you want an extra check on your spelling and grammar. You can have it enabled anywhere, meaning it works on any website that you type on, or just copy + paste your writing into a document where Grammarly can check it out. Grammarly has a free plan, and honestly, for me, that's enough. They do have a Pro option, which is currently $6 a month if billed annually ($15 if billed monthly), which gives access to rewriting sentences, personalized suggestions, AI prompts, a plagiarism scanner, and more.

9: The Young Writer's Workshop

This list would not be complete without listing the greatest resource of all (at least for me!): The Young Writer's Workshop. It's run by Brett Harris and Jaquelle Ferris, both of which are published authors, alongside a huge team of writers and instructors whose mission is to help young writers ages 12-25 grow and learn! The Young Writer's Workshop is not free--it's about $40 a month if billed annually or $47 a month if billed monthly--but you get access to a huge content library, a fantastic community, instructors who are ready to help you grow with live office hours, the WriterScore+ test, and so much more! If you're ready for a larger investment, I would highly suggest checking out the Young Writer's Workshop. I've grown so much in just two years, and I'm looking forward to many more years to come.

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Well, that's it for my writing resources list! I hope this was helpful to you, and even gave you some new resources to try out for yourself. Let me know down below if you have any favorite writing resources, and have a great day!

Best wishes,

~ Jonah