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"January 17th, 2010\n\nSolid writing skills open up career-boosting opportunities for professional writers and for those with aspirations beyond their basic job description. Journalists, fiction writers, scientists, teachers, business professionals, law students and other professionals can all get ahead by inspiring and influencing others with their writing. Whether you're an undergraduate wanting tips to organize your papers; a novelist who needs help with character development; or a technical writer in search of tips to write more engaging copy, here are 100 little ways all of you can dramatically improve your writing."

"Taking writing courses can help writing teachers become better writers, mentors, and readers. There are several free university level writing courses that can be taken online. Credit is not available for any of the courses and degrees are not awarded, but the opportunity to build new skills is undeniable. Here are 10 self-paced writing courses to explore in your spare time."

Podcasts with interviews with some of the world's greatest writers.

Podcasts with interviews with some of the world's greatest writers

more than 2,300 first-person accounts of slavery and 500 black-and-white photographs of former slaves. These narratives were collected in the 1930s as part of the Federal Writers' Project of the Works Progress Administration (WPA) and assembled and microfilmed in 1941 as the seventeen-volume Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States from Interviews with Former Slaves.

These life histories were compiled by the staff of the Folklore Project of the Federal Writers' Project for the U.S. Works Progress (later Work Projects) Administration (WPA) from 1936-1940. The histories describe the informant's family education, income, occupation, political views, religion and mores, medical needs, diet and miscellaneous observations. Pseudonyms are often substituted for individuals and places named in the narrative texts.

Easy Street Prompt story starters from Writers Digest Mag

AwesomeStories is a gathering place of primary-source information. Its purpose - since the site was first launched in 1999 - is to help educators and individuals find original sources, located at national archives, libraries, universities, museums, historical societies and government-created web sites. Sources held in archives, which document so much important first-hand information, are often not searchable by popular search engines. One needs to search within those institutional sites directly, using specific search phrases not readily discernible to non-scholars. The experience can be frustrating, resulting in researchers leaving key sites without finding needed information. AwesomeStories is about primary sources. The stories exist as a way to place original materials in context and to hold those links together in an interesting, cohesive way (thereby encouraging people to look at them). It is a totally different kind of web site in that its purpose is to place primary sources at the forefront - not the opinions of a writer. Its objective is to take the site's users to places where those primary sources are located. The author of each story is listed on the preface page of the story. A link to the author provides more detailed information. This educational teaching/learning tool is also designed to support state and national standards. Each story on the site links to online primary-source materials which are positioned in context to enhance reading comprehension, understanding and enjoyment.

Great resources for students:  charts and maps the writers drew as they planned books or lessons Auden's chart on Romanticism, Nabokov on Ulysses Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha County, Vonnegut onthe shape of the story, etc.  Just wow

Ning for female writers

Writer blogs about writing with lots of helpful links

The meanings and origins of over 1,600 English sayings, phrases and idioms. This writers' resource spawns ideas for headlines, advertising copy, song lyrics, poetry etc. Journalists, advertising copywriters, songwriters, or anyone interested in creative writing in English, can benefit from this ideas generator.

doctorow's take on why we need not just twitter and facebook and diigo but also older methods of socialmedia--blogging

this is the best analysis on why we need the varied forms of social media in the classroom--and in life

St. Columba's College English department's transition year extended essay assignment is a great project.

Orwell's advice to writers.

"Studio 360 explores F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby and finds out how this compact novel became the great American story of our age. Novelist Jonathan Franzen tells Kurt Andersen why he still reads it every year or two, and writer Patricia Hampl explains why its lightness is deceptive. We'll drive around the tony Long Island suburbs where Gatsby was set, and we'll hear from Andrew Lauren about his film G, which sets Gatsby among the hip-hop moguls. And Azar Nafisi describes the power of teaching the book to university students in Tehran. Readings come courtesy of Scott Shepherd, an actor who sometimes performs the entire book from memory."

Mentor Texts: Another great idea from Writing Fix.

This is an interactive website based on the Choose-Your-Own-Adventure books/games. The characters of Harry Potter have been thrown into The Hunger Games (as tributes or mentors) by Lord Voldemort. The player chooses one of the characters and must read each passage, then makes a decision for that character, which could result in becoming the Victor...or "Reenervate" to try again. If you have students who like Harry Potter or The Hunger Games, they will have fun on this website. New characters are unlocked daily & we plan on writing more stories - one with the characters rebelling against Lord Voldemort and breaking out of the arena. It is great practice for reading skills - some characters have longer passages, some shorter. Some have up to 144 different scenarios (that's 144 pages of text). The least amount of reading for a player is 19 pages. So think about your low readers - that may be more than they read in a week by just playing one character. The writers who have/are contributing to this non-profit project include teachers, high school students, college students, professional writers, graphic artists, musicians, librarians, and so many more. We're all fans of both series, of course. :) (For grades 7 and up) I have a free download of lesson ideas for using The Potter Games in your classroom here: http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/The-Potter-Games-Using-Interactive-Fiction-to-Improve-Reading

Xlibris provides a book publishing guide to writers and authors on how to publish a book through self publishing in UK, and offers print on demand services.