Whether you’ve got a novel in you, or a short story, or a poem… or you like journaling, or you want to write your family history, or you’re curious about any other kind of writing… the library can help! Full disclosure, this blog post is going to have some good writing resources in it, but it’s also an excuse for me to plug the fact that we have some writing programming going on as well! The groups are meeting virtually, of course, but the Sheboygan County Writers Club has two meetings, a large-group meeting and a small-group workshop, every month! Here are the links to the meetings for March: large group here, small group here.

But even if you can’t make it (or aren’t interested in that), there’s plenty of other library resources that can help out with writing. For instance…

Poets & Writers Magazine (also on Overdrive)

Poets & Writers Magazine is one of, if not the, best-known magazines about writing. In addition to having articles and essays about the craft of writing and interviews with all sorts of different writers, they also have an extensive Classifieds section at the end with information about upcoming writing contests, calls for submissions from literary magazines and agencies, people offering editing services, and all sorts of other resources for writing, editing, and publication.

Great Courses on Writing (Kanopy) (also audio on Hoopla)

Please note that the links above will take you to all the Great Courses results from these resources. Unfortunately, it’s not possible to create a list of just their writing resources. However, I’ll also separate out a few of them here: Writing Great Fiction, How to Publish Your Book, How to Write Best-Selling Fiction, Becoming a Great Essayist, Screenwriting 101, and The Secrets of Great Mystery and Suspense Fiction.

Both Kanopy and Hoopla have access to Great Courses although their selections are a little different. Also, importantly, the courses on Kanopy are video and do not count towards your 10-item monthly limit. On Hoopla, the courses are audio lectures; they do count towards your limit, but the entire course will only count as one checkout.

Gale Courses on Writing

While the Great Courses are really video or audio lectures, Gale Courses are instructor-led courses, and they have an entire section on creative writing. As their website describes it, “whether you’re looking for personal enrichment or professional development, these six-week online courses are the perfect way to learn a new skill or enhance your existing ones. You’ll spend roughly two to four hours each week completing two engaging lessons in an enjoyable, interactive learning environment. Expert instructors develop and lead every course, and you’ll be able to interact with them and with fellow students in lively online Discussion Areas. New sessions start every month, so you can sign up anytime.”

Books on Writing

Because of the way the Dewey Decimal System works, all the books about writing are in roughly the same spot in the library. And because there are so many different types of writing, rather than just give you one, I’ll point out the whole section! There’s books on screenwriting, becoming a novelist, getting published – even books specifically on punching up your descriptions or how to improve dialogue to be more realistic.

I decided to divide these up based on topic, so below, I’ve linked to lists of materials by subject. Not all of them are Mead items; after all, one of the big advantages of being in the Monarch Library System is that we can get books from any of the 30+ other libraries in the system! The lists below contain both adult and children’s materials; note that you can use the filters in the sidebar to narrow down the target audience.