22 Writing Quotes From Writer’s Digest Magazine in 2022

One of my favorite traditions as an editor with Writer's Digest is re-reading all the issues of the previous year to kick off the new year. There's just always so much functional advice and inspiration packed into each issue, but reading them all at once is incredible.

(Subscribe to future issues of Writer's Digest here.)

As a writer, it's exciting to get advice from actual literary agents and editors, for sure. But as a reader (and well, writer too), I love getting tips, tricks, and insight from the likes of Ian McEwan, Susan Cain, Marlon James, Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Tiffany D. Jackson, Ursula Vernon, Sonali Dev, and so many others.

So I decided to share my experience a little bit by highlighting 22 writing and publishing quotes from the print magazine in 2022. When you get a moment, try reading through all the issues as well and look forward to more great advice in 2023!

"The only way to become a writer is to be a reader first. Read diligently, widely, and voraciously—especially in your genre. The lessons will seep in over time and make you a stronger writer." —Nita Prose from "Breaking In"

"I've had the same habits forever. I write mornings, five days a week. Do that, and every few years, you have enough for a book." —Andre Dubus III from "Dig In or Cut Yourself Free"

"Writing a novel is like embarking on a road trip. There's a beginning, middle, end, and—more importantly—a journey occurring all the while." —E. L. Tenenbaum from "Eyes on the Road!"

"I think the thing that is most helpful to me now at this point in my career is not overthinking things and just putting yourself on the page. Not thinking about the market, and not thinking about the book that you read last week that was really good and why didn't you write that book, and not thinking about will people think I'm stupid if I say this. There are so many things you can worry about when you're writing that are all irrelevant. Two people can write the same book and it'd be two completely different books. The important thing is a book that you write is your book and it's you, and you put yourself into it and don't listen to any of the interference from anywhere else in the world." —Lisa Jewell from "The WD Interview"

(Get the January/February 2022 issue of Writer's Digest here.)

"My agent actually said to me when I first turned this manuscript in: 'You always know when you've really hit it in a manuscript when the people who read it start telling you their own personal stories that they thought about in reaction to your book.' They're not talking anymore about the story you've told; they're talking about their own story. There's something you've written that's made it personal to them." —Susan Cain from "The Beauty in the Bittersweet"

"Don't romanticize writing. It's like exercise. You get better if you do it every day." —Tanya McKinnon from "Meet the Agent"

"I think what sometimes goes wrong with world-building is that people spend too much time on it. Build to the point of where it's of use to the character, otherwise you fall into exposition." —Marlon James from "The WD Interview"

(Get the March/April 2022 issue of Writer's Digest here.)

"Embrace the one-sentence pitch." —Stephanie Delman from "Meet the Agent"

"Have fun with the writing process. Writing is the only thing you have any control over." —Adam Oyebanji from "Breaking In"

"You need to give yourself permission to be bad when you are drafting. That reason that's so important is because a lot of writers, especially when you're starting out, have that little voice in your head that says, 'This is so terrible. Why did I think I could write a book? I can't ever show this to anyone.' They let that voice get so loud that they don't end up writing anything. This is where you need to embrace the suck. Let yourself be bad. It's OK. Everybody's first drafts are bad. My first drafts are terrible, but once you have a bad first draft down, you can fix it. You can edit it, you can polish it up, but you can't get anything done if you don't shut that voice down and get those words out." —Kate Quinn from "The WD Interview"

(Get the May/June 2022 issue of Writer's Digest here.)

"Book two was the hardest thing I've had to do in my professional career, as an author or otherwise. Far worse than getting my first one-star review." —Heather Chavez from "Lessons From Book Two"

"Remember that publishing is a business. The end goal is to make money. Yes, we write for the love and the art of it all. But love doesn't pay the bills. Love the art. Work the business." —Nikesha Elise Williams from "IndieLab | Author Spotlight"

"Spend as much time reading books you hate as books you love. And figure out exactly why you hate them. And I don't mean thinking, Oh, the characters aren't fleshed out and moving on. What about the characters aren't fleshed out ... And how would you fix those problems if you were the author? The way I learned to tell stories was by figuring out what I did and didn't like as a reader and then practicing it in my writing." —Katalina Gamarra from "Breaking In"

"But it's important to remember that you have to have metrics of success that are not dependent on the outside world. They have to be more internal things. And by that, I mean, you can't say, 'Well, my worth as a human being is determined by the worth of my rate-per-word,' you know? If I'm worth only 2 cents per word, then I am not very valuable versus if I'm worth a dollar per word. You can't go that way because that will be just psychologically incredibly damaging." —Silvia Moreno-Garcia from "The WD Interview"

(Get the July/August 2022 issue of Writer's Digest here.)

"As advice for myself—write the stuff you're excited by, write the book where you can hear the dialogue in your head, write it down now while it's still exciting. Write the scenes you know and string them together later. Don't worry about how well it will sell. Don't even worry about the end or how it will all hang together. The books you're excited by rarely let you down." —Ursula Vernon (aka T. Kingfisher) from "Words Always Come First"

"Children's horror isn't truly about scaring kids. It's about giving them a safe place to explore their own fears and—most importantly—learn how to cope with them." —Alex R. Kahler (aka K.R. Alexander) from "Writers on Writing"

"As a reporter, if I only wrote whenever I felt inspired, I would have gotten fired. Which is why, when writing this novel, I never waited for inspiration to strike. I wrote a bit every day—sometimes as little as 300 words—and trusted that if I kept showing up, the work would eventually improve." —Tracey Lien from "Breaking In"

"I don't walk into books with a message in mind. I typically walk in with the actual problem, the plot itself, and then as we're going through the motions of the story, the message, honestly, it presents itself." —Tiffany D. Jackson from "The WD Interview"

(Get the September/October 2022 issue of Writer's Digest here.)

"At its very heart, I believe there is only one story arc in the world: There's a character in an uncomfortable situation and they must find a way to resolve it." —Sonali Dev from "Writers on Writing"

"Get creative. I love reading queries that blend interesting comps to give me an immediate idea of what their story is like. I am always looking for pitches that feel as exciting and enticing as book jackets." —Alexandra Weiss from "Meet the Agent"

"Figure out which secrets you want to keep and which you want to slowly unveil to others or just to yourself." —Su Cho from "Breaking In"

"Short stories are great for throwing off the influence of others and finding your own core. But maybe most important of all, they teach you something about the value of readerly curiosity and how to instill it." —Ian McEwan from "The WD Interview"

(Get the November/December 2022 issue of Writer's Digest here.)