Writing & Citing

So you want to be a writer?
Creative Writing Corner

Nanowrimo - National Novel Writing Month
Think you can write 50,000 words in one month? Try it each November with us!

Blogs & Tips
Try the Snowflake Method
Top 10 Blogs for Writers 2013
Advanced Fiction Writing Blog
Eight Rules for Writing Fiction
8 Words to Seek & Destroy in Your Fiction Writing
Beginners Blunders to Avoid

Query Letters, Agents, and Publishing
AgentQuery.com
How to Write a Query Letter
10 Dos and Don'ts of Query Letters

so you want to be a writer?
Charles Bukowski, 1920 - 1994

if it doesn't come bursting out of you
in spite of everything,
don't do it.
unless it comes unasked out of your
heart and your mind and your mouth
and your gut,
don't do it.
if you have to sit for hours
staring at your computer screen
or hunched over your
typewriter
searching for words,
don't do it.
if you're doing it for money or
fame,
don't do it.
if you're doing it because you want
women in your bed,
don't do it.
if you have to sit there and
rewrite it again and again,
don't do it.
if it's hard work just thinking about doing it,
don't do it.
if you're trying to write like somebody
else,
forget about it.
if you have to wait for it to roar out of
you,
then wait patiently.
if it never does roar out of you,
do something else.
if you first have to read it to your wife
or your girlfriend or your boyfriend
or your parents or to anybody at all,
you're not ready.
don't be like so many writers,
don't be like so many thousands of
people who call themselves writers,
don't be dull and boring and
pretentious, don't be consumed with self-
love.
the libraries of the world have
yawned themselves to
sleep
over your kind.
don't add to that.
don't do it.
unless it comes out of
your soul like a rocket,
unless being still would
drive you to madness or
suicide or murder,
don't do it.
unless the sun inside you is
burning your gut,
don't do it.
when it is truly time,
and if you have been chosen,
it will do it by
itself and it will keep on doing it
until you die or it dies in you.
there is no other way.
and there never was.

Academic Writing Resources

To access the following video links first you will need to login to your connect.hallco.org account using your school computer login info, then scroll to the bottom and click on the Atomic Learning tile. Then you will be able to click on the links you need and see the short help videos.