This month we have expert advice from Simon Whaley on how to structure writing for maximum success. Ten Top Tips looks at approaching an editor in the right way and Successes provides you with your monthly inspirational encouragement. The End Note and Useful Websites will, hopefully, be as useful as ever.

• Editor's News
• Successes
• Expert Advice
• Top Tips
• Useful Sites
• Inspiration

Useful Sites for Writers

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed
This is a great site for finding research related to health and all kinds of medicine. I would recommend that you read the ‘Using PubMed’ guides before you start to get the most from the website. It has a searchable database and I found the advanced search very helpful as it allows you to choose ‘free full text’ and be a little more specific about what it is you want to view. If you don’t use it, you’ll end up with hundreds, if not thousands, of texts to view.

www.brainyquote.com/
Shhhh – I stole this site from the blog of Diana Nadin our Head of Student Services as I liked it so much. It’s pretty self-explanatory really and I had a great time just mooching around it.

www.theshortstory.org.uk/
Does what it says on the tin, or in this case the homepage, and is a great place to go to get some last minute inspiration for the Poetry and Short Story Competition. It’s a “campaign to celebrate the short story. We believe that the short story is one of the most exciting and important literary forms, that can and should reach the widest possible readership. We believe that the short story matters.” And contains “everything you could ever want to know about the short story: reading them, writing them, events, competitions, workshops and projects.” It a great site with lots of downloadable short stories from known and emerging writers.

Remember, if you run a website that you think may be of use to our readers, let me know. If I like it, I’ll publish a link to it giving you a free plug. What could be better than that?