Used to be if you wanted to find an agent you might grab for the latest edition of the Novel & Short Story Writer's Market. That's what I used to do years and years ago. Fortunately, there's plenty of information online nowadays, and you don't have to buy a new book every year to get the latest info (though you may have to pay an annual subscription fee depending on which site you use).

Here then are the sites I've found most useful when looking for an agent:

• AgentQuery
• QueryTracker.net
• Association of Authors' Representatives
• Publishers Marketplace

Make sure to cross-reference any potential agent in one or more of the f... [More]

For the longest time I was receiving daily Word of the Day emails from Dictionary.com. Then they stopped. It's one of those things—I was getting it for so long, usually casually glancing at the word then deleting the email, that I never really did anything when the emails started not arriving. I figured a system glitch or something.

I finally got around to looking into what's up and discovered that while my email address was still subscribed, I still wasn't getting the emails. Nothing in the spam folder, either. I tried re-subscribing, but it said I was already subscribed. OK. Unsubscribe. Subscribe again. Wait for confirmat... [More]

This is a reference post providing some links to resources that discuss manuscript formatting with a few notes of my own at the end. I'll update as needed.

If you have any resources of your own, feel free to post a comment below. I'd love to make this a more comprehensive resource.

Here are the links:

• Holly Lisle's How to Format a Manuscript
• Wikipedia: Manuscript format
• Mary Soon Lee's Standard Manuscript Format
• Writing World: A Quick Guide to Manuscript Format
• Pam McCutcheon's Manuscript Format for Fiction Novels
• Robert J. Sawyer's Manuscript Format Checklist
• SFWA ... [More]

I'm starting a new blogging series to focus on reference sources I find useful on a day-to-day basis as I'm writing, editing, and proofing. Think of it as a recommended reading list, though it may encompass other blogs that focus on the craft of writing or even web sites. Really anything of value to the mechanics, style, or general process of writing.

This, then, is Part 1, to focus on my 'go to' thesaurus of choice, The Synonym Finder, edited by J.I. Rodale. I've got a copy of Roget's International Thesaurus (Fifth Edition), but it became a secondary reference source not too long after I bought The Synonym Fin... [More]