Admittedly, I’m a relative newcomer to the field of fiction writing. Well, I spent a lot of my youth writing stories, in the Sword and Laser families of course, and recently found a trove of them. Horrible. Anyway, like I said, I’m relatively new to fiction writing and I wondered if the Foil & Phaser crew had books, blogs, etc. on writing that they endorsed? I can give you tons of examples for academic writing, my specialty, but I was hoping we could compile a list of resources for folks.
My contribution is a book called The First Five Pages (http://www.amazon.com/The-First-Five-Pages-Rejection/dp/068485743X). Some reviewers argue that it’s a bit simplistic; I’d argue that you should focus on the fundamentals. Anyway, what other writing resources do folks endorse/recommend?
James Hedrick is a PhD Candidate in Political Science living in Washington, DC. He spends his days writing about politics and his evenings writing about anything but. He will soon self-publish the first book in his urban fantasy series Hell Against Texas entitled "Cauldron Bubble."
Foil & Phaser 
I could mostly use your guidance on academic writing. I just collected my first year results and was 2 percent off a first. Gutting. But seriously, I don’t even want to hear about university stuff again until September.
Last Christmas, my sister gave me Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird, which was kind of useful, but not as useful as Beginnings, Middles and Ends by Nancy Cress.
Misskzebra, shoot me a personal email or message, and I’ll send you a ton of academic writing resources in a few days (traveling right now for a new job, so I’m away from my personal library). My primary rec is Helen Sword’s “Stylish Academic Writing.” Great learning and reference book. & I completely understand never wanting to hear about university stuff. I’ve been in waaaaaay too long myself. Damn grad work.
My favorite resource is the Scrivener writing software, available for both Mac and PC. https://www.literatureandlatte.com/ It makes writing and editing works of any length really simple, greatly aids in producing ebooks, and includes some nice extras like an extensive character name generation function.
[…] Writer’s Resources You Endorse. […]
Scrivener also gives you a free 30 day trial and that is 30 days of use not calendar days.
I will add any links sent in to the Resources page, accessible from the menu. https://foilandphaser.wordpress.com/resources/
You can also email them directly to me at foilandphaser@gmail.com
Great resources folks. And thanks All-Mighty Admin.
For academic writing in science I would recommend you have a look at Coursera’s “Writing In The Sciences” MOOC. It really sharpened up my skills in both writing and editing. https://www.coursera.org/course/sciwrite
Actually if you have a piece of work that needs research you could definitely save yourself time by checking to see if there’s a MOOC anywhere that covers it. Over the last year I’ve had a go at all sorts of subjects (not just with Coursera, there are lots of MOOC providers!) from Astrophysics to Latin American History, and the beauty is that if you don’t have time to take part you can still watch the videos and get a grip on any relevant reading. I think quite a few S&L folks did the Coursera Fantasy & Sci-Fi Fiction course and I’d recommend that too (despite the teething troubles), it gives you a nice overview of the history of and influences on the genre.
I like Scrivener as well, helps me keep all my noodling and notes together.
Also, I *cannot* believe I forgot to mention the Writing Excuses podcast writingexcuses.com – if anything has convinced me to give writing a shot, it’s this. There is SO much information here, practically every episode is worth listening to. It may well treble your reading list, mind.