Website Mother Lode

The Ninja Writer spends most of her time panning for gold on the web. Like all panners, she finds mainly fool’s gold. But the real thing is out there, too, if you know where to look.

Here are some of the Ninja Writer’s recent finds in her ongoing search for websites that shine. Check them out!

www.smithmag.net/sixwords. If you haven’t been living in a cave, you’re probably heard about the six-word memoir. Summarizing your life in six words forces you to home in on the essence of who you are, to cut down to the bone. It also trains you to write with utter precision and clarity. I can hardly think of a better exercise. Try writing your own, and post it on smithmag.net. The site has hundreds of six-word memoirs to read, too. They’re fascinating—and slightly addictive.

querytracker.net. Whoever came up with the idea of creating a database of real query letters and agent responses in order to track acceptance trends was a genius. On this useful website, you can read successful and unsuccessful queries, look at the actions of individual agents, and search a database for agents and publishers. Anyone wandering the wilderness in search of publication should check this one out.

eighteenquestions.com.Approximately 10 zillion websites offer advice from authors, but none are quite like this one. Over 100 published authors have answered a set of eighteen questions—called the 18Q. The answers are insightful, interesting, and informative. They’re also darned fun to read.

rejecter.blogspot.com. The irony of this blog won’t be lost on anyone who has been writing for longer than a week. Rejection is a way of life for virtually all of us. So why would we read a blog by someone whose job it is to reject 95% of the submissions sent to a literary agency? Because it offers some of the most valuable information you can get your hands on—and it’s way interesting to read something from the other side of the desk.