Swag

Need a StoryADay journal, coffee mug or t-shirt to keep you going through the challenge? Click here.

Graphics

• Official participant badges are here (4/20/12).

Inspiration

• The Writing Excuses Podcast is fifteen minutes long and features three working writers and/or artists and their guests riffing on writing. It’s really valuable even if you are not, like the guys in the podcast, writing in SF/Fantasy/Horror/comics. They talk about craft, the day to day job, and the business. And it’s fun.
• InkyFresh Writing Prompts – from StoryADay participant Janel Gradowski, posted on alternate Fridays (4.26.11)
• Zadie Smith’s Rules For Writers
• Check out Rachel Green’s Photo Prompts on Flickr if you need a story idea (5/01/10) – via Amanda
• Follow @WritingPrompt on Twitter for regular prompts (5/01/10) – via Amanda
• Writer and Editor Tom Bentley shares excellent advice on living and working as a writer (4/20/10).
• Blogger Chris Brogan talks about where he finds ideas and about the practice of writing. Not fiction-related but useful nonetheless. (4/13/10)
• Sign up to read A Short Story A Day from AmericanLiterature.com (added 3/15/10)
• Advice from Billy Collins Poetic advice to writers from the former Poet Laureate
• Escape Pod A sci-fi short story podcast. If you need inspiration, why not listen to some great short stories?
• Hack Your Way Though Writer’s Block Great advice for days when you get stuck.
• Inky Girl A writer’s weblog, from former Inkspot Editor, Debbie Ohi, mostly focusing on kid’s lit — plus great original comics.
• Jennifer Weiner on Ideas Novelist Weiner shares her inspiration for her novels
• Name Your Characters Name your babies with the most popular current baby names.
• Where To Find Ideas Writing inspiration from Leo Babuta
• Hack Your Way Though Writer’s Block Great advice for days when you get stuck.
• One Writer’s Post-Morten on his efforts to write a story a day for a YEAR (and you thought we were being ambitious?!). Really useful analysis of what he gained from it! (added 3/15/10)

Productivity Tools

• A huge list of other monthly writing challenges from Dragon Writing Prompts
• One Word A fun, get-writing exercise. They give you a word, you start typing, they cut you off after 60 seconds. Fun way to warm up (added 3/18/10)
• Word Count Tool Online cut and paste tool for counting all those lovely words
• Write Or Die! Set your time limit and write quickly, or Dr. Evil’s gizmo will begin to erase your words!

Writing Prompts

• The Daily Prompt by Email  from StoryADay.org (during the challenge only)
• Weekly Write On Wednesday prompts from StoryADay.org
• Daily topics to get you going, from someone who had a similar idea for A Story A Day
• Chaotic Shiny writing prompts and exercises
• Piano Bar Song titles that can also be used as story titles
• All But Forgotten Oldies – more song titles to spark stories
• Rory’s Story Cubes – now available for iOS. Also available as incredibly pleasing physical dice.

About Writing/Storytelling

Jon Scalzi’s The Big Idea One writer asking other writers about the Big Idea behind their stories. Always fascinating.

Story Structure To Die For – an introductory article and the offer of a whole free ebook on the topic by novelist and screenwriter P.J. Reece.

On writing unsympathetic characters - from Elizabeth Hand’s talk at the Odyssey S/F Writers Workshop

Amazon.com’s Backstory – author interviews and more

On Writing About Loss – and other ‘exhausted’ topics, by short story writer Robin Black. Some great ideas here.

Leverage Writers’ Blog – The TV show Leverage (which I’ve never seen) has some wonderfully opinionated writers who share their thoughts here. This page has articles about screenwriting, but they focus on story, story, story (not the ins and outs of typsetting or the TV business, although there is some of that, which you can skip if you don’t care.) WARNING The language is not always G-Rated.

Short Story Collections Online

Project Gutenberg – The Granddaddy of them all. All books here are public domain (and therefore a little elderly, no I mean they’re classics) but you can rest assured you’re not abusing anyone’s copyright. Books are available in a variety of formats from Text files to ePub and Kindle formats.