Seagulls Are Just Beach Pigeons And Have Limited Grace, Style, And Cleverness, While On The Other Hand,

Very good things to know, if you're a writer.

Awesome Sites and Links for Writers

Just about every writer out there has several go-to websites that they use when it comes to their writing. Be it for creativity, writer’s block, to put you in the mood or general writing help. These are mine and I listed them in hopes that you’ll find something that you’ll like or will find something useful for you. I’ve also included some websites that sound interesting.

Spelling & Grammar

Grammar Girl — Grammar Girl’s famous Quick and Dirty Tips (delivered via blog or podcast) will help you keep your creative writing error free.

The Owl — is Purdue University’s Online Writing Lab (OWL) it’s a great resource for grammar guides, style tips and other information that can help with your writing, especially academics.

Tip of My Tongue — have you ever had trouble of thinking of a specific word that you can’t remember what it is? Well, this site will help you narrow down your thoughts and find that word you’ve been looking for. It can be extremely frustrating when you have to stop writing because you get a stuck on a word, so this should help cut that down. 

Free Rice – is a great way to test your vocabulary knowledge. What’s even better about this site is that with every correct answer, they donate 10 grains of rice to the United Nations World Food Program. So, please disable your adblock since they use the ads on the site to generate the money to buy the rice.

HyperGrammar — the University of Ottawa offers up a one-stop guide for proper spelling, structure, and punctuation on this site.

AutoCrit — the AutoCrit Editing Wizard can check writing for grammar errors, clichés and other no-no’s. It also provides a number of other writing resources as well.

Writer’s Digest — learn how to improve your writing, find an agent, and even get published with the help of the varied blogs on this site.

Syntaxis — it allows you to test your knowledge of grammar with a ten-question quiz. The questions change every time you take the quiz so users are sure to be challenged each time around. It definitely helps writers know if there’s something that they need to brush up on.

Word Frequency Counter — this counter allows you to count the frequency usage of each word in your text.

Tools

Copyscape — is a free service that you can use to learn if anyone has plagiarized your work. It’s pretty useful for those that want to check for fanfiction plagiarism.

Write or Die —  is an application for Windows, Mac and Linux which aims to eliminate writer’s block by providing consequences for procrastination.

Written? Kitten! — is just like Write of Die, but it’s a kinder version. They use positive reinforcement, so everytime you reach a goal they reward you with an adorable picture of a kitten.

Information & Data

RefDesk — it has an enormous collection of reference materials, searchable databases and other great resources that can’t be found anywhere else. It’s great to use when you need to find something and check your facts.

Bib Me — it makes it easy to create citations, build bibliographies and acknowledge other people’s work. This is definitely something that academics will love. It’s basically a bibliography generator that automatically fills in a works cited page in MLA, APA, Chicago or Turbian formats.

Internet Public Library — this online library is full of resources that are free for anyone to use, from newspaper and magazine articles to special collections.

The Library of Congress — if you’re looking for primary documents and information, the Library of Congress is a great place to start. It has millions of items in its archives, many of which are accessible right from the website.

Social Security Administration: Popular Baby Names — is the most accurate list of popular names from 1879 to the present. If your character is from America and you need a name for them, this gives you a accurate list of names, just pick the state or decade that your character is from.

WebMD — is a handy medical database loaded with information. It’s not a substitute for a doctor, but can give you a lot of good information on diseases, symptoms, treatments, etc.

Google Scholar - is an online, freely accessible search engine that lets users look for both physical and digital copies of articles. It searches a wide variety of sources, including academic publishers, universities, and preprint depositories and so on. While Google Scholar does search for print and online scholarly information, it is important to understand that the resource is not a database.

The Old Farmer’s Almanac — this classic almanac offers yearly information on astronomical events, weather conditions and forecasts, recipes, and gardening tips.

State Health Facts — Kaiser Family Foundation provides this database, full of health facts on a state-by-state basis that address everything from medicare to women’s health.

U.S. Census Bureau — Learn more about the trends and demographics of America with information drawn from the Census Bureau’s online site.

Wikipedia — this shouldn’t be used as your sole source, but it can be a great way to get basic information and find out where to look for additional references.

Finding Data on the Internet — a great site that list links that can tell you where you can find the inflation rate, crime statistics, and other data.

Word References

RhymeZone — whether you’re writing poetry, songs, or something else entirely, you can get help rhyming words with this site.

Acronym Finder — with more than 565,000 human-edited entries, Acronym Finder is the world’s largest and most comprehensive dictionary of acronyms, abbreviations, and initials.

Symbols.com — is a unique online encyclopedia that contains everything about symbols, signs, flags and glyphs arranged by categories such as culture, country, religion, and more. 

OneLook Reverse Dictionary — is a dictionary that lets you describe a concept and get back a list of words and phrases related to that concept. Your description can be a few words, a sentence, a question, or even just a single word. 

The Alternative Dictionaries — is a site that you can look up slang words in all types of languages, including Egyptian Arabic, Cherokee, Cantonese, Norwegian and many, many others.

Online Etymology Dictionary — it gives you the history and derivation of any word. Etymologies are not definitions; they’re explanations of what our words meant and how they sounded 600 or 2,000 years ago.

MediLexicon — is a comprehensive dictionary of medical, pharmaceutical, biomedical, and health care abbreviations and acronyms.

Merriam Webster Online – the online version of the classic dictionary also provides a thesaurus and a medical dictionary.

Multilingual Dictionary – that translate whatever you need from 30 different languages with this easy-to-use site.

Writing Software

Open Office — why pay for Microsoft products when you can create free documents with Open Office? This open source software provides similar tools to the Microsoft Office Suite, including spreadsheets, a word processor, the ability to create multimedia presentations, and more.

LibreOffice — is a free and open source office suite. It was forked from OpenOffice.org in 2010, which was an open-sourced version of the earlier StarOffice. The LibreOffice suite comprises programs to do word processing, spreadsheets, slideshows, diagrams and drawings, maintain databases, and compose math formula.

Scrivener — is not a free program, but it’s certainly a very popular one. It’s great for organizing research, planning drafts, and writing novels, articles, short stories, and even screenplays.

OmmWriter — is a free simple text processor that gives you a distraction free environment. So you can focus only on your writing without being tempted or distracted by other programs on your computer.

Evernote — is a free app for your smartphone and computer that stores everything you could possibly imagine losing track of, like a boarding pass, receipt, article you want to read, to do list, or even a simple typed note. The app works brilliantly, keeping everything in sync between your computer, smartphone, or tablet. It’s definitely a useful app for writers when you have ideas on the go.

Storybook — this open source software can make it easier to manage your plotlines, characters, data, and other critical information while penning a novel.

Script Frenzy — scriptwriters will appreciate this software. It offers an easy layout that helps outline plots as well as providing storyboard features, index cards, and even sound and photo integration.

Creativity, Fun & Miscellaneous

National Novel Writing Month — is one of the most well-known writing challenges in the writing community, National Novel Writing Month pushes you to write 50,000 words in 30 days (for the whole month of November).

WritingFix — a fun site that creates writing prompts on the spot. The site currently has several options—prompts for right-brained people, for left-brained people, for kids—and is working to add prompts on classic literature, music and more.

Creative Writing Prompts — the site is exactly what it says. They have 100+ and more, of prompts that you can choose from.

My Fonts — is the world’s largest collection of fonts. You can even upload an image containing a font that you like, and this tells you what it is.

Story Starters — this website offers over one trillion randomly generated story starters for creative writers.

The Gutenberg Project — this site is perfect for those who like to read and/or have an ereader. There’s over 33,000 ebooks you can download for free. 

The Imagination Prompt Generator — Click through the prompts to generate different ideas in response to questions like “Is there a God?” and “If your tears could speak to you, what would they say?”

The Phrase Finder – this handy site helps you hunt down famous phrases, along with their origins. It also offers a phrase thesaurus that can help you create headlines, lyrics, and much more.

Storybird – this site allows you to write a picture book. They provided the gorgeous artwork and you create the story for it, or just read the stories that others have created.

Language Is a Virus — the automatic prompt generator on this site can provide writers with an endless number of creative writing prompts. Other resources include writing exercises and information on dozens of different authors.

Background Noise/Music

SimplyNoise — a free white noise sounds that you can use to drown out everything around you and help you focus on your writing.

Rainy Mood — from the same founders of Simply Noise, this website offers the pleasant sound of rain and thunderstorms. There’s a slide volume control, which you can increase the intensity of the noise (gentle shower to heavy storm), thunder mode (often, few, rare), oscillation button, and a sleep timer. 

Coffitivity — a site that provides three background noises: Morning Murmur (a gentle hum), Lunchtime Lounge (bustling chatter), and University Undertones (campus cafe). A pause button is provided whenever you need a bladder break, and a sliding volume control to give you the freedom to find the perfect level for your needs and moods. It’s also available as an android app, iOS app, and for Mac desktop.

Rainy Cafe — it provides background chatter in coffee shops (similar to Coffitivity) AND the sound of rain (similar to Simply Rain). There’s also individual volume and on/off control for each sound category.

8tracks — is an internet radio website and everyone can listen for free. Unlike other music oriented social network such as Pandora or Spotify, 8tracks does’t have commercial interruption. Users create free accounts and can either browse the site and listen to other user-created mixes, and/or they can create their own mixes. It’s a perfect place to listen to other writer’s playlist, share yours or find music for specific characters or moods.

You know you are all-in with the game when you're still trying to hit it on top of a sarcophagus. That's legendary status right there, folks.

This is such a thing...

But then egos take over and the stories turn to shit...

reblog if you’ve read fanfictions that are more professional, better written than some actual novels. I’m trying to see something

I concur. Wail and shred, good sir.

I love when kids reach out with the full extent of their creativity. And this girl is brimming with brilliance in my estimation. I hope she keeps that light burning for decades to come.

This little girl recreated iconic album covers for Black History Month and she seriously NAILED it!

Meet six-year-old Abigail. A few months ago, she and her mom Miriame decided they’d do something special to mark this year’s Black History Month.

The mother-daughter duo ultimately teamed up with photographer Ernie Michael Hall and graphic artist Glen Thomas to recreate seven iconic album covers. And the results are absolutely stunning and spot-on!

“I wanted to pay homage to some awesome singers,” Miriame told BuzzFeed via email. “I basically picked artists I grew up listening to in my childhood and as a young adult. I wanted to show my daughter some of the singers I’ve loved throughout the years.”

Everything is perfect about these images, from the way Abby captures the unique essence of each artist to the small styling and design details, like the clever incorporation of Abby’s name throughout each album title.

The ambitious project took one month to complete, which wasn’t an issue for the young model. “She loves taking pictures, acting, and dancing and loves dressing up and getting into character,” Miriame said.

Miriame also used this project as an opportunity to present Abby with more diverse representations of black women. “Young black children are aware of the current racial climate in the US because it’s always in the media,” she explained. “I hope we ensure that our children have pride and self-love and love the color of their skin and the texture of their hair.”

When asked whether she had any additional comments, Miriame simply stated: “Black girls rock.” There you have it!

And in case you wanted to see just how accurate these recreations are, check out these amazing side-by-sides. First up we have Whitney Houston’s 1985 self-titled debut album:

Toni Braxton’s 1993 self-titled debut album:      

Missy Misdemeanor Elliott’s 1997 debut album Supa Dupa Fly:   

Brandy’s 1994 self-titled debut album:      

Alicia Key’s 2001 debut album Songs in A Minor:

Erykah Badu’s 1997 debut album Baduizm:    

 And Anita Baker’s 1986 breakout album Rapture:    

Love this so much!

I love that this art lover chronicles art history, thusly sharing her or his knowledge and appreciation of art, artists, and the varying degrees of nuance, subtlety and life that art and its creators breathe in to the world. And the anecdotal send-up for this entry made me smile because it let me know that this contributor has passion for art and deliberately (and adroitly, I might add) sought out little known information about Hopper's benchmark masterpiece. Well done!

(So says a ridiculous artist and kook named Wes ...as well as a thousand other names...)

June 7th, 1942: Edward Hopper completes his best known painting, the seminal Nighthawks. When asked by a Chicago Tribute reporter about the philosophical meaning behind the diner having no clearly visible exits Hopper responded, “Shit. Fuck. I did it again. Goddamnit. Fuck. Not again. I did it again. Shit.” and slammed his hat on his leg.

I have held many things that were beautiful, priceless even, but none had ever compared to the woman who gifted me with two beautiful, vibrant, and amazing souls. I could search the universe over twice, and would always come back to her, my Carey, the love of my life, the mother of that which I hold dearest in this world.

"I took a photo of us, mid-embrace. When I am old and alone I will remember that I once held something truly beautiful."

Submarine (2010)

What the heck, right? My credo is that I'm opposed to nothing and open to everything...

So go, Golden Potato of Luck!

As a culinarian, with over 20 years of experience and training, in a vast array of epicurean options, I have to say that one of my favorite descriptive terms these days is: slurpable.

Long live ramen!

(Or most any other noodle... except udon... fucking udon... big ass, sweaty-tasting, soppy-wet, edible shoelaces...)

Yeah, fuck udon... Hail ramen majesty!

Jayme Deerwester, USA TODAY, usatoday.com

The situation in the beleaguered Here Comes Honey Boo Boo camp keeps getting stranger — and sadder.

Less than a day after TLC pulled the reality show over allegations that newly single family matriarch Ma …

As if this a shock to anyone... I can't believe this trailer trash family ever received any notoriety whatsoever. They epitomize what is wrong with our nation, our population, and families today. They are almost as disgusting, as the garbage that is the Kardashian clan. They all just sicken me.