Allyn's blog

First off, don't forget to check out Courtney Rene's (author of Shadow Dancers) blog to read her interview with me and get your chance to win a free autographed copy of my new children's picture book The Pea In Peanut Butter or a doggy bag that contains a bookmark, magnet, stickers, and a few surprises from Louisiana. Since my post is about generosity today, I'll even throw in an extra doggy bag or two for the winner of that prize. Click here to enter Courtney's blog: http://ctnyrene.blogspot.com/2011/08/interview-with-allyn-stotz.html

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Now on to my post for this week...

ARE WRITERS GENEROUS PEOPLE?

Have you ever thought about that? Well my answer to that question is a definite “You betcha!”

Maybe we as writers didn’t start out thinking that we were necessarily generous people, however when you stop to think about everything and everyone that we have to give of ourselves to, I wonder if we aren’t some of the most generous people we know?

After all, think about how much writers give of themselves. We give anyone who will listen, thousands of our most intimate thoughts. We put them down on paper for their enjoyment. Let’s face it, most of us writers get next to nothing for that generosity, we just like doing it. We love dreaming and hoping that our words might make someone happy. That perhaps something we wrote might make a child smile and laugh. Our words might help someone through a difficult time in their life. And our words might take someone off into an adventure that they otherwise might never have been able to experience.

We writers give of our expertise to other writers by joining critique groups. If any of you are in one of those groups, think of everything that we learn from the group. We willingly trade writing secrets and knowledge to anyone that shows a desire to learn.

Most writers I know make time out of their busy schedules to check out other writers blogs and leave comments to help each other.

Let’s just admit it. We are AWESOME!!

So today, I’d like to continue on with that generosity and post a couple of my most helpful websites that I use in my storytelling and I challenge you to do the same.

Here is a site that I log onto almost every time I sit down to write a story. It’s a wonderful site that is full of ideas on how to describe places, actions, movement.

http://thebookshelfmuse.blogspot.com/2008/01/introducing-thesaurus-thursdays.html

Next up is a wonderful thesaurus site:

http://thesaurus.com/browse/smart

Here is a great one to find words that rhyme:

http://www.rhymezone.com/r/rhyme.cgi?Word=dust&typeofrhyme=perfect&org1=syl&org2=l

This is another good site for descriptive verbage:

http://www.kisd.org/khs/english/help%20page/Descriptive%20Words.htm

If you need to find a fairy or fantasy name, this is a great site for that. It also tells you what the name means.

http://www.emmadavies.net/fairy/?firstname=cali&lastname=crumwater&sex=0#a

And finally, here is a helpful site if you want to find out the readability age of your manuscript:

http://labs.translated.net/text-readability/

Now it’s your turn! If you are feeling generous today, let me know some of your favorite, most valuable writing sites or resources and hopefully we can both give some great help to another fellow writer who is in need of it. Let’s share the love!