Eleven Great FREE Online Resources for Serious Writers

With the development of the Internet, publishing companies have noticed something critically important: their submissions are way up, and the quality of the writing is also up. This can, in part, be ascribed to the wide use of word processors, which has made it easier and faster to write. But it's also because of the huge variety of resources available online to writers of all types, from romance novelists to magazine article writers.

The best part of this plethora of resources for writers: they're all free.

First the Basics

Editors edit less than ever today, largely because they have so many high-quality submissions to read, but also because publishing companies are continually cutting staff. For this reason, you must have an excellent grasp of the English language, from grammar and structure to spelling and punctuation.

1. One of the best places to find this is at Purdue University's OWL (Online Writing Lab). This resource has been put together by the English lab at Purdue, and helps you learn all the basics using short lessons, exercises, and projects. While there are dozens of other grammar and mechanics sites online, I have never found one to rival OWL.

Online Writing Workshops

These websites have been around since the Web was a collection of bulletin boards and listservs. The idea is that you can post your writing privately for others to read and critique, also privately. These, in my opinion, are the best of the lot.

2. The Internet Writing Workshop is better than many paid online writing workshops just because of the quality of help you'll receive there. The IWW is a collection of several very active specialized writers workshops that has been around for about twelve years, and it functions on a basis of critique exchanges via subscription email lists: you submit your story and critique one or two other stories, in exchange for someone else critiquing your story. Many of the writers here have developed into full-time professional writers while working here, and maintain a presence.