The ‘Write Stuff’: Library resources for your writing project

Putting together your first book?

All you can imagine and more is at your fingertips on this very website and of course our collection has many books on writing.

Let’s do a quick tour of what’s on offer for budding and experienced writers.

Our website: A one-stop shop of writerly tools

Need tips on how to get published? Our Writing page features links to publishing tips from the New Zealand Book Council and information on writing courses. You'll also find books on writing including manuscript preparation, style, creative writing and authorship. Not to mention information about writing prizes and local literary events like WORD Christchurch.

Literary criticism

Want to survey critiques on characterisation, plot, ethnic and gender issues? Then head to these eResources that contain thousands of essays and books by critics from around the world.

Cambridge Companions Online, Gale Literature Resource Center and the Literary Reference Center Plus are your go-to links for the history of literature and the latest on literary movements and their leading lights.

The Times Literary Supplement Historical Archive gives you access to this venerable journal of literature and its book reviews and articles from 1902-2014. Other historical newspapers you can search via Gale Primary Sources include the Punch Historical Archive.

Research

Gale offers impressive database searching across other subject areas as well as literature. Head to the Academic and General OneFile options and write some keywords on topics of interest into the search box. For articles you can read straight away check the “full text” box, and use the filters to refine your search, especially if you get thousands of results.

Papers Past is an impressive resource if the history of Aotearoa is your focus. You can search thousands of articles that were published in New Zealand newspapers between 1839 and 1989 (local paper, The Press is available for 1861-1989). For more recent articles you could try the Australia/New Zealand Reference Centre Plus or check out the extensive microfiche indexes collection on Tuakiri, the second floor at Tūranga.

Hone your writing

LinkedIn Learning offers many writing tutorials. Topics include writing your first draft, selling your first novel to a publisher, daily routines to improve your writing, finding motivation and the foundations of fiction.

Need to check a word? Our library catalogue includes many dictionary eBooks including the OED (Oxford English Dictionary).

Use Your Allusion

If you want to check a line in a poem or short story the Poetry and Short Story Reference Center has over 700,000 poems and 51,000 short stories in its database.

All this and more...

This is just a snapshot of what’s on offer in our collection.

You will find many books about writing in the 800s, the literature section of our libraries’ non-fiction collection. Chat with a librarian to find the right book for you or check out the whole list of our eResources at the website’s A-Z directory.

We also have occasional author talks and book launches at libraries. Find out what's coming up in our event calendar.