Resources and Distractions for Writers
by Nancy Sackheim
A Soft Murmur is an online background noise generator designed to help you relax, focus, and tune out unpleasant sounds from your environment. It was created by Gabriel Brady for people who like to work in public places, but don't like the noise distractions.
Unique Name Generator is a random generator. You can generate names for person, business, new random addresses, and fake credit cards for your fake people. While designed primarily for businesses, it can also be a vital tool for writers, who often perseverate over details.
Useful Science is a website that summarizes scientific findings in five seconds or less. As Malcolm Gladwell tweeted "A group of Canadian grad students have created a website that elegantly summarizes scientific findings. It's genius." The areas covered range from nutrition to environment, education, persuasion, productivity, sleep, and more.
Google Scholar provides a simple way to broadly search for scholarly literature. From one place, you can search across many disciplines and sources: articles, theses, books, abstracts and court opinions, from academic publishers, professional societies, online repositories, universities and other web sites. Google Scholar helps you find relevant work across the world of scholarly research.
The Story Graph helps you track your reading and choose your next book based on your mood and your favorite topics and themes. Story Graph's machine learning AI is like your trusted go-to friend for book recommendations.
Take a break, do a little browsing. After all writers are required to research. Bonus points if you have a little fun in the process!
gabriel@asoftmurmur.com
Malcom Gladwell @Gladwell
