Hot Links Thursday 11/12/08

Just a quick round-up of interesting things I've discovered on my internet travels.

CSS Toolbox - a free CSS editor and validator. I haven't tried it, but it looks really useful.

100 Blog Topics I Hope You Write - Well, not me personally, it's actually Chris Brogan. The list has quite a  techy theme, but might inspire you if you write about such things.

The Cambridge Guide to English Usage - Available as a free, downloadable PDF.

100 More Ways to Organise Your Life - Loads of useful organisation tools and services.

The Festive Toolbox and Over 100 Free Christmas Design Resources - Ideas and resources for giving your blog a seasonal makeover.

Cool Stuff for Twitter - Some useful tools and services including a few I haven't seen before.

101 Facebook Hacks You Never Knew About - Some great ways to make Facebook more useful and personal.

Down for Everyone - Very simple but useful. Just add the url of the site you can't access and find out whether it is down for everyone, or if the problem is at your end.

Twitter in Plain English - Short video explaining Twitter.

Typealyzer - Discover your blog's personality.


A Collection of Strange Links on Google.com - Visit Google's back alleys and side roads.

How to Create Blogger Label Feeds - The title is pretty self-explanatory. 

Email Error End Up On Road Sign - This should really be called 'Lost in Translation'.


Agent Query Connect - A place for agents, editors and writers to network.

30 Creative Website Headers - A collection of really nice looking headers, useful if you are looking for inspiration.

The Poor Misunderstood Semicolon - What are they, what do they do? Is it true they are the James Dean of punctuation?

Your Personalised Shakespeare Insult - Just click the link to get yours.

Letter to a Young Blogger - Really good blogging advice. Forget all those gurus, this is the stuff newbies should be reading!

That's all folks :-)

Post NaNoWriMo Resources

So, you’ve got your 50,000 words down and finished NaNo. Now it’s all over until next year and you can put your feet up and relax. Err, no. Now the real work begins! That was just the first draft, you now need to edit, rewrite, maybe even write more because 50,000 words is not enough for a full novel. Of course, you could simply pop your manuscript into a drawer and forget about it, but wouldn’t that be a terrible waste? Think of all the time and effort you put into to producing it in the first place, don’t you owe it to yourself to see this project through to the end?

You’ve still got a lot of work to do, that is the bad news. The good news is, you don’t have to do it straight away - take December off, your novel isn’t going anywhere and the break will help to give you a fresh perspective on it’s strengths and weaknesses. In addition, you don’t have to work at the same frantic pace. Now you have your first draft, you can take your time and hone it to perfection.

If you aren’t quite sure how to go about editing or rewriting, the following links should help. Oh, and if you weren’t able to complete NaNo, pay a visit to the the I Wrote a Novel, Now What? page on the NaNo site for details of other novel writing months - yes, they are springing up all over the place.

Editing and Rewriting Guides
1) BBC Get Writing - Editing Mini Course: A short online course covering editing, rewriting and how to ask for and receive critiques.
2) How to Revise a Novel: Holly Lisle offers some really useful advice and tips from the perspective of a published novelist.
3) National Novel Publishing Year: A forum offering a step by step guide to transforming your novel from a rough draft into a finished manuscript ready to be submitted to publishers.
4) Editing 101: Another online course covering the basics of editing and rewriting.
5) Poewar - Read What You Have Written: Informative article explaining how to undertake that first reading and how to make use of it.
6) NaNoEdMo: Like NaNoWriMo, but with editing. If you want to edit your novel at the same frantic pace you wrote it, why not wait until March and do it in the company of other crazy, sorry, dedicated writers.

And that’s all folks! If you have any suggestions, tips or resources for NaNo re-writers, don’t forget to leave a comment. And if you are not the least bit interested in novel writing, don’t worry, normal service will be resumed asap.

This post was first published on December 6th, 2007

It's Oscar Wilde day . . .

. . . on Twitter. Organised by @stephenfry, you can find all related tweets here.