NaNo’s approaching rapidly and I’ve got some fun links for you.

The Writertopia Progress Meter. There are two available; get the second one with the writer. You can use it to set your “mood” to illustrate how your writing is going.

If you like to do timed writings, try the Online-Stopwatch. You can do a count down or a count up. For extreme fun, try the Bomb Countdown.

Need some plot ideas for your novel? Try the 36 (plus one) Dramatic Situations for some twisty ideas.

Draw a Basic Mind Map of Your Character with guidance form Deborah Woehr.

How about a Timeline Generator for your fantasy or science fiction novel?

If you need details on a religion, try the God Checker featuring over 2,850 deities.

If you need a break from writing, there’s nothing better than fun with Sticky Notes?

Looking for some inexpensive classes to take for book research? How about FREE classes?

MIT Open Courseware has classes available in 35 departments. And there are some interesting classes available. For example:

• Physics of Rock Climbing – in case your heroine has to make a quick getaway up a mountain
• Fencing – because a sword is sharper than a pen
• Fundamentals of Ecology – if you’re building your own planets
• American Soap Operas – because this just sounds fun
• Kitchen Chemistry – I could teach this one with the experiments growing in my refrigerator…
• Food and Power in the Twentieth Century – Hmm… will food be the new currency?

Most classes have a syllabus, reading lists, and course materials like lectures and videos that can be downloaded.

Of course, there are a ton more classes than those I’ve listed here – most of which seem to be way over my head. But where else can you get an MIT education for free? Wander over and see if any of the classes will help you write your next novel.

I think I’m recovered from last week’s workshop. (It was a lot of work, but what fun!) I’m deep in the midst of planning out future workshops and I’ve got some exciting things coming up.

There’s another exciting thing I’d like to share with you. If you don’t follow JA Konrath’s blog, you should. He’s been posting for three years and he’s put out a lot of really practical information for writers.

And now he’s done one better. He’s compiled a lot of it into an ebook, available for free download on his site. This ebook, The Newbie’s Guide to Publishing Book, is 750 pages. Yep, that’s right… 750 pages. There is a LOT of great material here. The book is 3 MB in size, so it might take a while to download. I haven’t made it through the entire book yet (750 pages!), but I think it is one that can be dipped into over time, for a bit of just-in-time advice at different stages in your writing life.

Pop over to his blog today and download it. And check out his thriller series starring Lt. Jacqueline “Jack” Daniels.