Writing advice to unlock your unique creative magic
Advice from Published Writers
As we close out December, let’s take a look back at all of the Meet the Author interviews from 2025.
Now that we’re turning our attention to 2026—setting fresh writing goals, preparing our resolutions, and preparing for a busy, almost assuredly weird new year—it’s a great time to revisit the wisdom these generous authors shared with us.
I invite you to reflect on each writer’s advice and reread some interviews to find the inspiration you need to start 2026 on the right foot. I often ask the authors I interview what advice they would share with another writer. Here’s what they had to say.
“I would say that finding your authenticity and sticking to it is really, really important. Reading a lot is really, really important, and listening is important as well. Being open to making changes if you need to.
And try not to be so hard on yourself. That's what I would say.”
“Success is mostly because someone has been doing their thing for forever. But that doesn't mean that you do the same thing. You can absolutely pivot. I pivoted by offering my services besides illustration to authors.
It's okay to take a break. I think the best stories come from us actually experiencing life and seeing things. I've gotten so many picture book and illustration ideas by observing people and being outside instead of trying to force myself to write things. Yesterday, I had a pretty weird emotional day, and I decided to take a break and watch an anime episode because I wasn't getting anything done.
Take a break, go outside if the weather permits, and take time off to enjoy not working. Put in that vacation time. You’ve got to refill the tank.”
“Tell people when you're writing and tell them to leave you alone. Don't let anyone take that time from you. Now that I have the space for it, I let people know. Mondays and Tuesdays, those are my writing days.
You have to let people know, hey, I'm not going to answer my phone on this day. If it's an emergency, sure, but I'm not making plans. I'm not making doctor's appointments. I'm really, really protecting that time because, for so long, I didn't have it, and now that I have it, I have to protect it at all costs. The phone is away. I create a little bubble, and I work in it, and it's beautiful, and I'm so, so grateful for it.
Make the time, any time for it that you can, and let people know, ‘This is my time.’
Get started and go for it, almost have tunnel vision around it. I don't keep my phone around me. I used to use Freedom, which will block other things, but it's important to me to build that muscle of self-discipline and focus on what I'm doing and not feel like I need to check things.
I use an app called Calmly, and it's like a blank writing screen. There's not much on it, not many things to click on or look at. I've found that it’s been very helpful to have that full screen. That or I'm using my pen and notebook.”
“I would probably respond with a question and say, ‘What do you want to write?’
I have encountered a lot of stories where writing teachers have killed people's dreams. Maybe that's sometimes necessary, I don't know. It always makes me a little angry, sometimes a lot angry. This idea that this is what you can do or should do gets in the way of what people actually want to do. That advice doesn't work for someone who's trying to figure out how to strategically become a New York Times best-selling author. But those people aren't usually writers.
There’s a scene, I think it's in one of Annie Dillard's books. The writing teacher interrupts and says, ‘Well, do you like sentences?’ The student’s like, ‘What do you mean, do I like sentences? No, I want to write.’ If you actually love the materials, you love what you're working with, chase that, and be honest with yourself about what that is for you. Not what you think your parents want you to say, your teacher wants you to say, your friend wants you to say, your partner wants you to say. What is that for you?”
“Writers write. It's very simple. Writing begets writing, and often people are stuck in a very sad and upset place because they're not writing. They want to be writing and they're not writing.
I'm a huge proponent of timed writing. Playful timed writing. Use prompts if you need them. I have a few books of prompts in my arsenal. Just play.
I gave an in-person workshop. I had people doing five and ten minutes of writing, and people were surprised at how much they could do. I asked them to journal in the voice of their character. If you're writing fiction, journal in the voice of your main character. It is powerful.
I use 20-minute writing sessions, and so does my husband. We are both experienced writers. Starting can be really hard, and you will feel so much better if you can do even five minutes.
“Don't be so hard on yourself. Don't take yourself so seriously. I wasted so much time being so stressed out about things that are, frankly, not supposed to be stressful.
Creating is supposed to bring you joy, and even if you are frustrated, as I've mentioned, you still have to have strategies for dealing with the frustration. If your strategy, which is no strategy at all, really, is to bang your head against the wall and get frustrated and want to smash your laptop or something like that, if you just respond to the frustration by feeding it, nothing good will come of that.
You need to not be so hard on yourself and make sure that you're able to separate yourself enough from the work that you do not see as a mirror for your own identity. Invest in other people.
Don't try to exist in a vacuum where you are so concerned about what other people are thinking that impressing them becomes the main thing.”
“For fiction, it's important to write. It’s really important to write. It's important for everybody to write in terms of writing practice. I think people underestimate the power of a daily habit, whether journaling, meditation, or whatever. The most dramatic moments I've had in my career are with people who thought they were writers but didn't have a daily writing practice or see it as part of their identity.
I'm a runner. I've identified that way for at least a decade, and I will do things because I'm a runner: Oh, I should stretch my hamstrings every night. I'm a runner. I gotta keep that shit loose. If I get hurt and I don't run for two weeks, don't come talk to me. I'm going to be an asshole.
Same idea with writing. If I didn't take a journal on vacation, I'm going to go get supplies. People treat yoga or meditation that way, too. If you send someone gaga about yoga somewhere without a mat, she will find herself a mat. She will go get that thing. It's like that.
Writing practice for everybody on the fiction side. Understanding craft, knowing that most of your novels are never going to see the light of day. This is what I hear from fiction writers.
On the nonfiction side, especially on the how-to side, work on really, really developing that platform piece. It's not just audiences. A lot of people think it's the must-do to get a deal: you build a platform, then you'll get your deal, and you don't need your platform anymore. That is so not the case.”
“I'll use one of the points Michael and I return to often in From Page to Platform: the importance of professionalism. That encapsulates many of the things we've been talking about. If people are going after speaking engagements because they're interested in the financial benefits, then we provide some tips about negotiating a fee.
We emphasize that in the ideal world, the agreement is one that both parties are happy with. You don't want to be chiseling away for the last dollar because you're going to shoot yourself in the foot long term.
You're not done when you step off the platform. You need to continue to be professional, as Michael says—every interaction you have is like an interview for the next opportunity that's going to come your way. Don't be the Prima Donna who makes people feel silly during the Q and A period, or who ignores people who clearly want an opportunity to talk with you about your topic.
If you behave with professionalism, you open opportunities for yourself and other people, and you pave the way for more good things to happen.”
“Not to get too deep, but I watched my brother die in front of me while we tried to save his life. We knew he was probably going to die at some point from his cancer, but the way he ended up dying was shocking in that moment. He was at home, and my mother and I were trying to save his life, and he was in the arms of my mom, and I had this out of body experience where I was floating in the universe, and everything that mattered was a bright, shining star. Everything that didn't faded to black, and it gave me a North Star.
But the thing that's kept me going is this idea of legacy, this idea that one day that will be me. One day, my life will end.
Right before he died, even though he was very ill, my brother went to Yosemite. Everybody told him, man, you're going to be too far away from a hospital. My brother had his jaw removed to try to stop his cancer. Everybody told him not to go. But he still went. He still went. He looked at the photos from there, and it was such an important thing for him.
Now, I always tell myself, ‘Go to Yosemite.’ Go do the thing you need to do before you die. He needed to see Yosemite one last time before he died. I needed to get a book out in the world before I died. I needed to have loving relationships.
I've seen people who've lost people and haven't changed their lives. I could have chosen not to, but what it did was made me realize that I want to leave a legacy. I thought that legacy was winning the Oscars and making a lot of money, but it really became down to three things.
One, am I telling my stories in the most honest, empathetic ways I can? Two, am I helping other people tell their stories in the most honest and empathetic ways they can? And three, is the ripple effect of what I'm doing with my life helping change the stories we tell ourselves as a society and making it more empathetic?”
“The biggest, the most valuable piece of advice, the most valuable lesson that I learned, was that you can allow the process be how you become an expert.
You don't have to be an expert before you start writing or as you're embarking on a project. You can allow the writing, the researching, and the unfolding of something be how you master it.
This is a reminder that I need more than anything else: It’s also okay to be done with a subject. The question I hear, even today, all the time, is, ‘When's the perimenopause book coming out?’ Trust me, I am already an expert in that personally; I do not need to become an expert in that professionally. I have no interest in the perimenopause book. No. Thank you. I am done.
A friend of mine who is a PhD and a university professor was like, ‘I just don't understand how you could dedicate so many years of your life to a subject, and then be like, “I'm not interested. I'm done.”’ I see how that would definitely horrify her.
For me, I'm like, ‘Yeah, it's done. That was a chapter. The book is closed.’”
“As silly as it sounds, writers write. You could tattoo that on your arm.
It sounds so simple, or even pedantic, but it's true. So many people say, ‘Oh, I could write a book, oh, I had this idea.’ Yeah, okay, well, where is it? Where's the writing? Where's the crappy piece that needs to be edited, the ugly vase that needs to be reshaped into a nicer piece of pottery?
Writers write. There's no shortcut. There's no way around it, even in the age of AI, whatever is going to happen with that. We're still humans, and we still love these words.
The other thing is consistency. I do fall off the wagon with my own. But I’ve done that 10 minutes a day. Just try this. It’s the same thing with yoga or whatever, and it’s not every day. Don't beat yourself up if you miss a day. But it does seem to be a trick.
If you want to, you'll find the time. Because we can find time for all sorts of stuff. We manage to find time for the things that we really want to find time for.”
“Make sure that the story you want to tell really is a book and not something else, because a book is a lot. It's not just a lot of work. It takes a big emotional toll on you, no matter what.
But a book is very long. Maybe you need to write a magazine article. I don't know. I would encourage people to play with different formats before you immediately assume it has to be a book.
I get it. A book is very glamorous and everything, but maybe it's not the right container for what you're trying to do.
I would also say, as people go through the process, take time to make sure that the people you're working with are the right fit. I know it's impossible to get an agent, it's impossible to get a book deal. I get it, we don't always have a choice. I didn't have a choice at any of these points, either.
But these relationships are important, and you want to make sure that the people you are collaborating with really get it and have the same goals as you.
It is a journey—for years, probably. So I would encourage people to be mindful of who you're collaborating with, and make sure that it's the right fit for you. You don't want to force it. A book is going to live forever. You want to do it right. You want to work with people who can help you do it right.”
“Be protective of your writing. Feedback is always good, but fundamentally, it's what you have to say, and if you don't want to share it for a while, while you're working that out, be protective of it.
Be protective of giving yourself that time to write. Be protective of how you write, whether you set up accountability calls like I did or write alone.
You can write in your house. You can say, I need to leave and go write at the library or something, but form a box around your writing practice and really hold it dear.
It's so easy for other priorities, for other people's priorities, and for other priorities of your own, to overwrite that. If you really want the writing to get done, you have to be protective of it.
It's very easy in our capitalist brainrot to think, well, if I'm not publishing this, or if no one's reading this, it doesn't have value. If this writing isn't productive—I hate that word—then I can't protect it, because it's not leading to anything.
And it's like, it absolutely is. It's making you a better writer. It's giving you an outlet. You truly never know. You could come back to this in 10 years and say, oh my gosh, this is actually the makings of my first book or my second book. You never know where that practice will lead you.”
“The biggest tip I always tell people is to set a word count goal. That’s the best way to keep that momentum going.
If you’ve read Atomic Habits (affiliate link*), by James Clear, he has the thing where if you have a streak going and you miss a day, he’s like, ‘Don’t miss two days.’ Get back on your feet. Don’t worry about missing one day. Keep moving forward. That might be, you write five days a week and you miss Monday. Okay, no problem. You’re going to write four days this week.
Do as much as you can to make the writing process fun for you and keep it in that game mode for yourself. That translates also into all the harder stuff, the marketing and the other tasks on your list that it takes to get the book published.
Look for the fun. Lean into the fun. Don’t get too bogged down, like, ‘I have these 50 to-do items before the book is published, and I’ve only done 20 of them.’ Okay, take the win. Who says 50 was the magic number?
You have to have a light attitude about all of it. At least for me, that’s what works. If I try to put myself into a rigid place, I’ll just rebel at some point. That probably means not doing any writing or forgetting about my book for three months. That’s not where I want to be.
Avoid comparing yourself to everyone else. This is your book. It could be whatever you want it to be. I often have clients who are like, ‘Well, how should it be done? How many of this, or how many of that? How many chapters should I have?’
There are no rules. There’s not even really a book length that you really need to shoot for. You can certainly write a 20,000 word book if you want to."
“No matter what kind of book you want to put out there, in this day and age, you have to have a brand and an online presence.
I know part of the reason I got a book deal was because I already had a brand and online presence. I'm already doing media and stuff like that as a money expert. That made it a little bit easier.
If you're starting from scratch, I would say even while you're writing your book, start doing that work too. Make your Instagram account. Do what you know. Start a podcast. See if there's any way you can get onto traditional media as an expert in whatever field that you're in, and start laying the groundwork.
You have probably a year to write, a year to edit. You’ve got two years to lay that groundwork. It'll be so much easier for you when it's time to promote your book, because they'll instantly ask you, ‘Oh, you have a book. What's your Instagram?’
There's stuff on Instagram that relates to the book that I just wrote. So you want to do that stuff in advance or while you're writing the book. I thought, ‘Oh, I'm an author.’ You're a salesperson first, author second a little bit. You need to sell this book because it is your pride and joy.
You spend so much time on it, and so I'm selling books on my book tour events, or a friend's event whereI didn't get paid. I paid my own way to travel, did this little speaking thing, and then I was there with the bookseller.
You are a salesperson. And don't feel like that's a bad thing. Just own it, because you want to sell this. This is a really great product, and you think people should have it, right? Most people would be like, ‘But I'm an artist.’ Yeah, but you’ve also got to sell. You’ve got to put food on the table.”
“Speaking from my own experience, I think that one of the biggest things that made the difference for me to go from floundering writer, writing in circles on novels that never came to anything, to writer of viable novels that get published is embracing what I call a middle path of freedom inside a framework.
Embrace structure, but not in a rigid way. I was really resistant to the idea of structure for a long time, like learning about story models or doing anything that was going to hamper my creativity or my intuitive nudges. I became really lost in that.
The flip side is, earlier in my life, I had been very rigid and perfectionistic. I couldn't set down a sentence until I already knew it was going to be perfect and that is very inhibiting.
That middle path is finding a way to build structure, like with a writing practice.
It's structure in terms of, like, when are you writing and where are you writing, and maybe accountability buddies.
But also in terms of what's happening on the page, like having a little bit of an outline that you don't hold rigidly, and a little bit of an understanding of why different aspects of the story happen at the points that they happen, and why you're building toward what you're building toward, and having an innate engine to the story, which story structure can help you build.
It actually liberates creativity, is what I eventually learned.
I have a novel writing program where we work for three months together, and everybody's writing a fast, rough draft of a novel. It's really common to either want to have nothing to do with structure because it feels hampering or like it's not creative, or to really cling to it and be like, ‘I'm going to follow the steps.’ We want to find a way to live in the balance between those things.”
“One thing I did in my Google Doc manuscript was this: You can write whatever you want in the header, right? I put three reasons why I was writing the book.
While I was drafting, I wanted to remind myself of, like, what is the actual point of this? Why am I here?
One of those reasons was, I get to learn the process of writing a book, and that is worthwhile in itself. Even if I'm not going to sell 10,000 copies, even if I'm not going to use this in my work every day for the rest of my life, I'm getting a valuable learning opportunity.
Having those three why statements at the top of every page while I was typing was really helpful.”
“My advice would be different depending on how they're feeling about social media.
So, if they're a writer who is very active on social media and feeling frustrated about that and struggling with that and feeling like their attention is diminished because of their social media use, I would really want to encourage you to step back or away from a platform.
I would want to encourage you to begin, perhaps, more mindful scrolling. I teach some practices—not in the book, but I talk about them on podcasts all the time—for having a small noticing note on your phone.
Every time you pick up your phone and you open social media, pause and go to that note and write down why you opened it. What was the feeling? What was the impulse? What was the thought there? Or was it mindless?
Can you start to notice how mindless it is also when you're on social media? I encourage you to perhaps set a five minute timer, get out a notebook, scroll, and just start noticing what you're seeing and how it's making you feel.
Those noticing practices become clues to how social media is impacting your creative energy and your writing process. If you're not sure if any of this applies to you, start there.
If you are sick of social media and you're like, ‘I don't want to do this anymore,’ liberate yourself from the apps, my friends. Come listen to Off the Grid. Come get the free Leaving Social Media Toolkit, buy the book.
When you leave social media, almost every writer I have worked with experiences a surge of creative energy because they've been creating so much for these platforms. They've built these muscles of almost over-creating sometimes, and that energy wants to go somewhere.
You can direct it into your writing, or direct it into your email newsletter. That can be really generative and regenerative and healing for your attention and for your writing when you shift your focus, and then over time, rebuild different rhythms and habits for yourself.
My invitations are to begin these noticing practices, to tune in to your own social media use and learn how it's impacting your writing process, or to step away, channel that energy elsewhere, and then see what arises in your work as a result.”
“Projects come and tap you on the shoulder. I believe this about creative ideas. I've been in a season with really little kids and being the primary earner for my family where I couldn't say yes, no matter how much I wanted to, no matter how guilty I felt. I did not have the capacity.
I want to say out loud that that doesn't mean it will never be time. It feels like you're so stuck. And when those ideas are coming in and you're saying no, there's grief in that, for sure. So I think my advice is actually, hang in there.
Having some kind of practice where you're quiet in some way—for me, it's usually nature, but that is when I receive those ideas most clearly. I often have to prime myself to be in that more sustainable, flowy, creative mode. That doesn't come naturally.
I'm constantly juggling a million things. I'm a business strategist and coach; that's fairly linear a lot of the time. I think intuition and creativity are, if not the same thing, very closely linked. So something that allows you to tap into that inner wisdom, some kind of ritual or routine, it just feels essential.
I know people tell you, ‘You just need to sit down and write,’ but there are some seasons where you actually don't have time for that. Still, listening to that inner voice is the part that's essential to me.
Forgive yourself if you're not in a season of being able to take on a larger project, it's just real life. There will be a time. That's what I've come to realize. Two years ago, I wouldn't have told you that, but I think it'll circle back around.”
“The first is to find a writing practice that works for you. I think there's a lot of conversation on the internet and in books and things like that where people feel like they have to write every day, or they have to write for at least an hour every day, or whatever it is, and it doesn't have to be all or nothing.
There's not one right way to do it. There’s this idea they have to write first thing in the morning. But if you're a night owl, you should write at night.
How can you make writing work for you in this season of life that you're in? Our lives change, and you have to shift what works in order to work with the season that you're in.
The second piece of advice that I have is, I talk a lot about communicating and connecting with the spirit of your book and the idea that we can channel a story through us. It comes from some other place.
I think it can be really powerful to think of stories in terms of, the story picked you to tell it. Then we get out of this question that you asked earlier, like, ‘Am I allowed to spend time writing?’ There's more of this question of, ‘This story picked me to write it, so how can I find ways to honor the story and make time to honor what wants to come through me?’”
Advice I have a complicated relationship with. I guess if I'm thinking about a poet, my advice is: Read whole collections of poetry, not collections like anthologies, but entire manuscripts of poems.
Something I always tell my students is poetry is often taught one poem at a time, and that will make you feel bad. It's essentially like buying, Now That's What I Call Music CDs of art. You know what I mean?
It's like, ‘Oh yeah, I read the literal most loved poem by Walt Whitman, and then the most loved poem by William Carlos Williams. And then I read the most loved poems by Pat Parker, June Jordan, Audre Lord. I read the most loved poem by Langston Hughes.’
They have other poems. You're judging yourself based on the best of the best, on the best day of the best.
When you read somebody's whole collection, their entire body of work, it's often both of a piece of what they're most famous for and then vastly different.
The difference between reading an anthologized version, where everything is right up against each other, there's an implication from an anthology that, ‘Oh yes, she was thinking about this all at once. This is the master plan. What has been omitted is for the good of the collection.’
But it's not complete. It's just collected. When you read from the monographs, it's like living little bits of someone's life with them.
I really encourage people not just to read one poem, one book, even one essay. I really encourage people to take a long time with artists and their work, especially if they plan to write themselves. Writing careers and even books of poetry, they have ups and downs. They have high points and low bullet points.”
“I don't know that I'm the person to talk about process, but I do think I can say something about telling a personal story. Something I have learned in my own process of doing this, as well as something I have told students, is that you don't have to gut yourself to write effective personal writing.
You don't have to like fillet yourself in front of the entire world and spill every single heartbreak and pain. There's this tendency, especially when we write about personal stuff or trauma, that we have to justify ourselves constantly. Is this worthwhile to write about? Is this something that matters, especially when other people had it worse?
Everyone thinks that everybody else had it worse, but somebody had to have it bad at some point, right? We all think that, and it doesn't matter what it is. You don't have to sacrifice yourself. You don't have to sacrifice your well-being, your dignity.
I often tell my students that you don't have to sacrifice your dignity to tell a good story. I had to learn that. I learned that ironically, from my therapist, who is not the person who's coached me in writing in my life, but she's the one who taught me that. Sometimes the product can reflect the challenge of the writing itself. Sometimes that itself is enough. It's more than all the details that you have to give.
Now, obviously, being vulnerable is important, and finding a way to tell that story, but you don't have to sacrifice your mental health for it.
I think that, especially for young writers, there's this tendency to glamorize trauma as part of what makes you valuable as a writer. ‘I'm young and I don't come from whatever, but I do have these experiences I can exploit for my own writing.’
And if you want to do that, you should. If it would be healing for you, if you have a story you need to tell. But don't feel like all you are is your trauma.
I'm not good at talking about the process. My process sucks. I'll write in a fury for like two months and I won't write again for five years. I can't talk about process, but I can talk about the emotional journey attached to it.
I'll add one more thing to that. Perfectionism is part of the problem. My perfectionism also stems from trauma. I think that's true for a lot of people, but if you're a person who has that, you have to be aware of the ways in which your mental health is affecting your writing process. You have to figure out how to work with that.”
“I would circle back a little bit to what we were talking about in terms of your process, and maybe not worrying too much about what other people are doing and how they're doing it. It often helps to see how different people do what they do, but not to take anything as gospel or the exact right way to do things.
Everyone has to find their way. And once you've found your way, believing in it and—it sounds so fundamental and almost cliche, but really, really staying true to yourself, and not just the story you want to tell, but how you want to tell it.
Even for people who feel strongly that they are an individual artist, there's a lot of messages out there in terms of what readers want, what the market wants. Don't listen to those. You know best what the story needs to be.
Find readers, whether they're editors or readerly friends, who understand that vision, who line up with who you are as a person, as a storyteller.”
Closing out the Year
It has been such a pleasure to write Word to the Wise this year, and to share these interviews with you.
I have so much fun stuff in store for you next year—the annual 30-day writing challenge, seasonal writing rituals, and new ways to work with me—and all of it will be geared toward helping you strengthen your writing intuition and building a practice that helps you step into your creative power.
I hope you have a wonderful holiday season and a safe and happy New Year. I’ll see you on the other side!
*Affiliate Disclaimer: I sometimes include affiliate links to books and products I love. There's no extra cost to you when buying something from an affiliate link; making a purchase helps me keep creating Word to the Wise!
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