One Piece of Advice From 35 Nonfiction Authors in 2024
Here I’ve collected one piece of advice from 35 nonfiction authors who were featured in our author spotlight series in 2024. Be sure to click the author names if you’d like to read their full author spotlights from earlier this year.
“If you are a younger writer struggling to find work, do not take on more debt by seeking some advanced degree in some writing-related area. It will not make you more money.” –Michael Arceneaux, author of I Finally Bought Some Jordans (HarperOne)
“Don’t count on sticking to your timeline. Give yourself at least double the amount of time you thought it would take! And as part of this, have other sources of income to get you through the process.” –Solomon Brager, author of Heavyweight: A Family Story of Holocaust, Empire, and Memory (William Morrow Paperbacks)
“Make sure you have or develop a rich inner life. That’s the wellspring of creativity.” –Lester Fabian Brathwaite, author of Rage: On Being Queer, Black, Brilliant…and Completely Over It (Tiny Reparations)
“Grind, grind, grind! There are so many hurdles and reasons to feel self-doubt that it takes a single-mindedness and ultimately blind faith to push through and do the work day-in, day-out.” –Jonathan Butler, author of Join the Conspiracy: How a Brooklyn Eccentric Got Lost on the Right, Infiltrated the Left, and Brought Down the Biggest Bombing Network in New York (Fordham University Press)
“Keep going. There are so many moments where you come back to what you wrote and just want to tear it all up. You start to think perhaps no one cares what you have to say or maybe it’s all been said before. But there are people waiting for you to write in your tone, with your experience, and we have to almost recite this to ourselves daily as we write. So, show up and let what’s there come to the page—without editing. Editing is for later, in my opinion. In the beginning, our only job is to be in our creative space, and write.” –Yasmine Cheyenne, author of Wisdom of the Path (Harper One)
“There is so much good advice out there already! And often, for whatever reason (Platitude!) (I don’t need advice!) (Please, that advice-giver wants to make a Muppet movie!), I failed to really heed that advice. But anyway, here’s a piece of advice that I think my younger self could have used: Don’t worry about knowing exactly what you want to say. Trust that what you want to say—even if you don’t know what it is—needs to be said, and eventually, inevitably, will be. And trust that you do have something to say. Everyone has something to say. Just keep writing. Just keep writing. As you draft and revise, perhaps for what feels like an eternity (It is an eternity. (An eternity exists in every moment.)), whatever needs to be said, you will eventually say.” –Matthew J. C. Clark, author of Bjarki, Not Bjarki: On Floorboards, Love, and Irreconcilable Differences (University of Iowa Press)
“I’m still pretty new to this, so I will be taking much more advice than I will be giving for a while. But I can say this for sure: Details are what drove me. If you over-report, ask unimportant questions alongside the important ones, jot down seemingly useless observations as often as possible, the story has a way of writing itself.” –Will Cockrell, author of Everest, Inc. (Gallery Books)
“I spent much too much of my life not quite understanding that the people who I admired—writers, filmmakers, musicians, artists, athletes, whomever—were real people. It took me forever (far too long) to realize that a filmmaker was simply someone who made a film; a novelist wasn’t some elevated being, they were a person who’d written a novel. If you want to be a writer, just write. If you want to be a great writer, keep writing.” –Nate DiMeo, author of The Memory Palace: True Short Stories of the Past (Random House)
“I would ask them how they balance what they want to tell people with what the reader is looking for.” –Ronald Drabkin, author of Beverly Hills Spy: The Double-Agent War Hero and Spy Who Helped Japan Attack Pearl Harbor (William Morrow)
“Keep writing.” –T.J. English, author of The Last Kilo (William Morrow)
“Don’t be afraid to share your unfinished drafts with trusted loved ones. My wife’s early reads were a gut check on whether I was heading in the right direction. She also flagged sections that dragged or where there wasn’t enough context for the average reader to follow along.” –Mike Hixenbaugh, author of They Came for the Schools: One Town’s Fight Over Race and Identity, and the New War for America’s Classrooms (Mariner Books)
“I have one piece of advice for those interested in writing a biography or a story with a historical background: It is critically important to conduct thorough research. Don’t leave any stone unturned in trying to discover what gems might be hidden in the information you collect. Conduct interviews, read novels from the period, collect pictures, testimonies, and official documents; tour the site of the events and do whatever else you can to shed light on the character, the setting in which she lived, and the central events (public and private) of her life. The more you invest in research, the better the writing process will be.” –Zipora Klein Jacob, author of The Forbidden Daughter (HarperCollins)
“It helps to have a really, really strong ‘want.’ I really wanted to finish and sell my first novel, The Anatomy Book, and I sacrificed a lot for that dream. It didn’t come true, but that blind desire—and the discipline I developed because of it—was so strong it made a lot of other wonderful things happen. Have a specific goal and put everything towards it. I think the universe tends to meet you halfway if you do that.” –Sarah LaBrie, author of No One Gets to Fall Apart (HarperCollins)
“This question is so hard, and I’m afraid my answer is a cliché. But honestly, the thing that has helped me more than anything is just sitting down and making work. I spent so many years not making anything, because I was so scared it would suck. Or making a few things and then obsessively editing them, trying to get one thing exactly ‘right.’ For me, the transformative shift has been to make lots and lots of work, to make enough work that I can figure out what I’m trying to do before I go back and try to revise and refine it.” –Sarah Leavitt, author of Something, Not Nothing: A Story of Grief and Love (Arsenal Pulp Press)
“Find a writing community. Writing with others has been so helpful to me. Join a writing group and participate in an online community, which I did during COVID. Currently, I’m part of a text chain of authors with books coming out in 2024, and it’s been so helpful to go through the publishing process with others.” –Margaret Juhae Lee, author of Starry Field: A Memoir of Lost History (Melville House)
“If an internal voice is nagging at you saying, ‘You must get down to writing!’ ignore it. It has been around all your life, and it is not your friend. It never has been. Don’t worry about publication, praise, or productivity. Relax and find the courage to let go, trust the process, and let yourself enjoy the simple act of writing in each ordinary moment. That’s all there is.” –William Martin, author of The Daily Tao (Hachette Book Group)
“Persevere. If you feel compelled to write a story, it’s probably worth writing. I was often tempted to give up on this project. Writing is work, and I could think of a million reasons not to continue my efforts. In the end, I just couldn’t let it go.” –Cindy Miller, author of The Alterations Lady (Apollo Publishers)
“Dare to be different. As enticing as it might be to write about the same topics as everyone else, don’t be afraid to cover things that aren’t being covered. It may be a lonely road initially, but if you keep writing with force and sincerity, you’ll build a genuine fanbase. The world needs more writers willing to explore the unknown, because those are the stories that need to be told.” –Marcus J. Moore, author of High and Rising: A Book About De La Soul (Dey Street Books)
“Stop talking yourself out of your book dream. Stop asking ‘what if’ and filling in the answer with the worst-case scenarios, like ‘What if I can’t finish this?’ and ‘What if no one wants to publish it?’ Instead, start asking ‘what if’ and filling in the answer with the best possibilities: What if I finish writing this book and it’s great? What if it gets published and readers love it? What if I get the chance to write more books? The former will slow you down and make you doubt yourself; the latter will convince you to keep going.” –Christina Myers, author of Halfway Home: Thoughts from Midlife (House of Anansi)
“Don’t worry about pleasing an unknown child with your story. Write for the child that you once were—or better yet, for the child that you are.” –Yevgenia Nayberg, author of A Party for Florine: Florine Stettheimer and Me (Neal Porter Books)
“With this book, I learned that not only does my writing style grow and change with time, so does my process. I was shocked to discover that what got a book done in my 30s (staying up all night writing for weeks on end) just isn’t doable in my 40s, and it took me a while to accept the fact that I would have to adjust my writing process to fit my needs in the present moment. But the adjustments I eventually made contributed to this being my most personally healthy and rewarding writing project to-date.” –Ijeoma Oluo, author of Be a Revolution: How Everyday People Are Fighting Oppression and Changing the World—and How You Can, Too (HarperOne)
“Be open to possible changes to your work amid the publishing process. Hold true to your writerly goals but give new perspectives on your work careful consideration—they may open the door to something grander in the end.” –Theodore Pappas, author of Combing Through the White House: Hair and Its Shocking Impact on the Politics, Private Lives, and Legacies of Presidents (Harper Celebrate)
“To be ever mindful of our power as conscious creators. Worlds are made up of language, words, ideas, thoughts. Through the microcosms we birth in our poems, lyrics, essays, novels, dramas, and screenplays, we can bring forth a just society.” –Deborah G. Plant, author of Of Greed and Glory: In Pursuit of Freedom for All (Amistad)
“Keep the faith. Your ‘last’ submission might be the one that hits the bullseye.” –Evan Rail, author of The Absinthe Forger: A True Story of Deception, Betrayal, and the World’s Most Dangerous Spirit (Melville House)
“Write the book that will bring about the world in which you want to live. This can be grand, if your book seeks to change our social, cultural, political world, but I also mean it in a smaller sense. Write the book that will reel in the people, the ideas, and the other books that you need in your life. I did end up feeling a bit as if Katharine had mentored me, or at least had drawn women and men into my life who have enormously influenced me. What a gift.” –Amy Reading, author of The World She Edited: Katharine S. White Edits The New Yorker (Mariner Books)
“Persistence! I’d been thinking about this book for nearly a half a decade, my first proposal didn’t sell, and I wrote 14 drafts of the second proposal before my agent felt it was ready to take out. Also: Surround yourself with good people who care about you personally and want to see you succeed.” –Jennifer Romolini, author of Ambition Monster (Atria Books)
“Trust the story to reveal the structure.” –Rosie Schaap, author of The Slow Road North: How I Found Peace in an Improbable Country (Mariner Books)
“Listen to your inner voice for its creativity, but not its criticism. Creativity is complex, and the inner critic struggles to understand complexity. So, when the critical voice shows up telling you to give up, don’t listen! If it tells you it hates a sentence in chapter 12, maybe go look at it.” –Stacey Simmons, PhD, author of The Queen’s Path: A Revolutionary Guide to Women’s Empowerment and Sovereignty (Hay House)
“That it’s always better to write without thinking than to think without writing. Afterwards, editing and revision exist for a reason.” –Ed Simon, author of Devil’s Contract: The History of the Faustian Bargain (Melville House)
“If you commit yourself to the process and lifestyle of writing, rather than simply the attainment of the end result, you will eventually attain the result.” –Dan Slater, author of The Incorruptibles: A True Story of Kingpins, Crime Busters, and the Birth of the American Underworld (Little, Brown & Co.)
“I think writing about your passion makes the process a dream. I had done the background work before putting pen to paper, so it never felt like a chore. It seems like a daunting process, but you’ll never know if it’s for you unless you try.” –Dr. Richard Smith, author of The World Beneath: The Life and Times of Unknown Sea Creatures and Coral Reefs (Apollo Publishers)
“Find a couple of writers (or other good friends who get it) who make sure you don’t give up when you think you really want to. Send each other your work, your concerns, your pains, your frustrations, and your joys, and just keep each other going.” –Chimene Suleyman, author of The Chain (HarperCollins)
“There are countless forces working against writers, but the writers who manage to overcome them to be successful are not always the writers with the most natural talent. They’re often the ones with the most determination. Never give up.” –Jerald Walker, author of Magically Black and Other Essays (Amistad)
“Write what you love. Write what you need. Let it be a place of joy and soul tending. And don’t forget that we are just one small part of a conversation that has been going on long before we were here and will go on after. Let your words be a part of the conversation.” –Lydia Wylie-Kellermann, author of This Sweet Earth: Walking with our Children in the Age of Climate Collapse (Broadleaf Books)
“Write what you can, to the best of your ability, and believe in the worth of your words—especially when others don’t.” –Kao Kalia Yang, author of Where Rivers Part (Atria Books)
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While there’s no shortage of writing advice, it’s often scattered around—a piece of advice here, words of wisdom there. And in the moments when you most need writing advice, what you find might not resonate with you or speak to the issue you’re dealing with. In A Year of Writing Advice, the editors of Writer’s Digest have gathered thoughts, musings, and yes, advice from 365 authors in dozens of genres to help you on your writing journey.
