These inspirational and practical quotes come from 500+ podcast interviews with hard-working, award-winning, and New York Times bestselling authors in more than 33 U.S. states and five countries. In Book 6, authors share their honest reflections on Writing Community, Revision, & Editors. These quotes reveal why writing communities are so important and how writers can get engaged, along with tips for revision and working with editors. Authors quoted include David Baldacci, Therese Anne Fowler, Steve Berry, Lisa Jewell, Ron Rash, Craig Johnson, Wylie Cash, Kristy Harvey, Brad Taylor, Charlie Lovett, Judy Goldman, Chris Fabry, Amber Smith, Tracy Clark, John Gilstrap, Kimmery Martin, A.J. Hartley, Clyde Edgerton, Jill McCorkle, Mark de Castrique, Cathy Pickens, and many more. Writing communities are where authors learn, grow, and support one another. As author Steven Grossman quips, “If I knew it was so much fun being friends with writers, I wouldn't have bothered with people that aren’t.” And as Ed Southern, author and Executive Director of the North Carolina Writers’ Network, says, “The literary community includes anyone who is involved with the written word, in one way or another,” and “You want community to be a place where people feel welcomed, and even nurtured, as opposed to a place where they feel put down or excluded.” And every author explains–in their own way–that revision is essential to the writing process. New York Times bestselling novelist David Baldacci says, “Self-editing continues to this day. Not every word that I write is going to be set in stone. Some days, I'm better than other days, and some days require more editing when I go back and look at what I've written. And sometimes I just delete it all and start again. That's just the nature of the beast.” And then there are the editors. As author Kevin Winchester tells us with a smile, “Editors, it's a love-hate relationship.” But editors are critical to the writing process, as these writers tell us. This book finishes with a section on mistakes, because they happen. But as award-winning author Cathey Pickens says, “If we're not making mistakes, and things aren't working, we just aren't trying anything new.”

These inspirational and practical quotes come from 500+ podcast interviews with hard-working, award-winning, and New York Times bestselling authors in more than 33 U.S. states and five countries. In Book 5, authors share their honest reflections on Writing Techniques & Characters. These quotes reveal how writers tackle the fiction techniques of the hook, emotion, theme, conflict, humor, plot, setting, and structure, and how they approach memoir, poetry, nonfiction, and short stories. They also focus on characters, point of view, and dialogue. Authors quoted include David Baldacci, Therese Anne Fowler, Steve Berry, Lisa Jewell, John Hart, Sophie Cousens, Ron Rash, C.J. Box, Craig Johnson, Wylie Cash, Kristy Harvey, Brad Taylor, Charlie Lovett, Judy Goldman, Chris Fabry, Amber Smith, Tracy Clark, John Gilstrap, Kimmery Martin, A.J. Hartley, Clyde Edgerton, Jill McCorkle, Jason Mott, Mark de Castrique, Cathy Pickens, Gavin Edwards, and many more. Because stories have to start somewhere, and so do quote books, this book starts with the section titled, “The Hook.” As author Matthew Duffus, Writing Center Director of Earlham College in Indiana, says, “We have so many options now for entertainment that we've got to be quick. We've got to hook readers and we've got to keep things moving.” Simply put, as award-winning novelist Jon Buchan quips, “We don’t write about the planes that land safely.” But there is more to a good story than the first few lines and the first chapter. That’s why this book has more sections and content than any other book in the series and why we get emotional about it. As award-winning author Randell Jones says, “A good personal story engages with real life. It has to be addressing some universal issue of the human condition, something that most readers can connect with.” Author Kathleen Burkinshaw agrees when she says, “Time can pass, technology will change, but the need for human connection through emotions, that's timeless.” Whatever form or genre you’re writing in, these quotes have something to support your journey through the world of wordcraft.

These inspirational and practical quotes come from 500+ podcast interviews with hard-working, award-winning, and New York Times bestselling authors in more than 33 U.S. states and five countries. In Book 3, authors share their honest reflections on Writing Process & Tools. These quotes reveal answers to some of the most commonly asked questions of writers. Authors quoted include David Baldacci, Therese Anne Fowler, Steve Berry, Lisa Jewell, John Hart, Sophie Cousens, Craig Johnson, Wylie Cash, Kristy Harvey, Brad Taylor, Charlie Lovett, Judy Goldman, Chris Fabry, Amber Smith, Tracy Clark, John Gilstrap, Kimmery Martin, A.J. Hartley, Clyde Edgerton, Jill McCorkle, Mark de Castrique, Cathy Pickens, David Joy, Gavin Edwards, and many more. Where do you write? When do you write? Do you write every day? How many drafts do you write? Do you create an outline? Do you use an editor? Do you? Do you? Do you? Though the answers vary in these pages, there are common denominators. As author and writing instructor Maureen Ryan Griffin says, “We all start with a blank page.” And as David Baldacci puts it, “There’s no perfect place to write.” Writers make do with what they have to work with. Take author and columnist Scott Fowler, who has earned 18 national APSE writing awards. He says, “I don’t go off to the mountain to write. I just go upstairs.” Or, as professor, author, and editor Michele Berger says, “A long time ago I said to myself, I can write anytime, anywhere.” Humility seems to be helpful to getting it done. As New York Times bestselling novelist John Hart says, “If a writer becomes hubristic, or begins to take this for granted, or really just thinks he can roll out of bed and bang it out without a lot of effort, that's the first step on the road to destruction.”

These inspirational and practical quotes come from 500+ podcast interviews with hard-working, award-winning, and New York Times bestselling authors in more than 33 U.S. states and five countries. In Book 1, authors share their honest reflections on The Writing Life. These quotes reveal what it really feels like to be a writer. Authors quoted include David Baldacci, Therese Anne Fowler, Steve Berry, Lisa Jewell, John Hart, Sophie Cousens, Ron Rash, C.J. Box, Craig Johnson, Wylie Cash, Kristy Harvey, Brad Taylor, Charlie Lovett, Judy Goldman, Chris Fabry, Amber Smith, Tracy Clark, John Gilstrap, Kimmery Martin, A.J. Hartley, Clyde Edgerton, Jill McCorkle, Jason Mott, Mark de Castrique, Cathy Pickens, David Joy, and many more. As the late Anthony Abbott so eloquently says in this book, “Writing is not about writing, necessarily. Writing is about living. And the more deeply and fully you live, the more you are able to write.” There is hope in this book but there is also angst and humility. Case in point is a quote by New York Timesbestselling author John Hart, who says that the writing life is so unbelievably wonderful that he feels “deep down that the universe must have plans to take that all away.” It makes him work even harder on his next book. The writers quoted in these pages grab for their pens and fire up their computers for the love of writing. They have a common urge to create, to use letters, words, and sentences to tell stories, either about themselves, or others, or about characters they create in their writing chambers. They write for therapy or to understand themselves and the world around them. They write for the sake of writing. They write for publication. They write to be remembered. They write to be heard and understood. And as more than one author says, they write because they can’t not write.

These inspirational and practical quotes come from 500+ podcast interviews with hard-working, award-winning, and New York Times bestselling authors in more than 33 U.S. states and five countries. In Book 7, authors share their honest reflections on The Emotional Writing Journey. These quotes are evidence that whatever emotions you experience as a writer, you are in good company. Authors quoted include David Baldacci, Steve Berry, Lisa Jewell, John Hart, Sophie Cousens, Ron Rash, C.J. Box, Craig Johnson, Wylie Cash, Kristy Harvey, Brad Taylor, Charlie Lovett, Judy Goldman, Chris Fabry, Amber Smith, Tracy Clark, John Gilstrap, Kimmery Martin, A.J. Hartley, Clyde Edgerton, Jill McCorkle, Jason Mott, Cathy Pickens, Gavin Edwards, and many more. The sections of this book are arranged in a careful order, starting with the struggles of rejection and ending on a high note with perseverance, because perseverance is really what every writer needs: that focused commitment to the work despite all the highs and lows that can go with it. As Craig Nova says, “…the bottom doesn’t last forever, and the top doesn’t last forever.” What can last forever, though, is your words. New York Times bestselling novelist Steve Berry says, “From 1990 to 2002, I wrote eight novels. Five of them went to New York publishing houses, and they were rejected a total of 85 times. It was on the 86th time that I made it, 12 years after I started. So my road to publishing was a very long process.” And Chris Fabry, an award-winning author who has published more than 80 books, says, “If you don't want to get hurt, don't write. If you don't want to have layers of your own soul exposed to people who say, didn't really connect with that, don't put the words down there. Because you will be rejected.” Writers are fortunate in that this thing they love to do can be so wonderful, and so powerful, that even when it sometimes makes them crazy—they want to do it anyway.

These inspirational and practical quotes come from 500+ podcast interviews with hard-working, award-winning, and New York Times bestselling authors in more than 33 U.S. states and five countries. In Book 2, authors share their honest reflections on Learning to Write. These quotes reveal that there are many paths to learning how to write. Authors quoted include David Baldacci, Therese Anne Fowler, Steve Berry, Lisa Jewell, John Hart, Sophie Cousens, Ron Rash, C.J. Box, Craig Johnson, Wylie Cash, Kristy Harvey, Brad Taylor, Charlie Lovett, Judy Goldman, Chris Fabry, Amber Smith, Tracy Clark, John Gilstrap, Kimmery Martin, A.J. Hartley, Clyde Edgerton, Jill McCorkle, Jason Mott, Mark de Castrique, Cathy Pickens, David Joy, Gavin Edwards, and many more. Author Bud Schill says that “if you were to put an infinite number of monkeys in front of an infinite number of typewriters, for an infinite period of time, eventually they would write a Shakespearean sonnet.” New York Times bestselling novelist C.J. Box didn’t bang around like a bunch of monkeys to obtain his success, but admits he was self-taught: “I deconstructed the books I really liked on my own to figure out how that author got me into it, what the pace was, what the arc was, the point of view.” New York Times bestselling author Ron Rash says, “We're not making McDonald's hamburgers. There’s just no clear-cut way to do it.” And award-winning author Renea Winchester quips, “The best thing that an author can have is a writing friend who’s immensely more successful than they are,” a point that New York Timesbestselling novelist Craig Johnson echoes when he says “I learned more in four hours talking with Tony Hillerman than I may have gotten in an entire year master's degree in writing.”

These inspirational and practical quotes come from 500+ podcast interviews with hard-working, award-winning, and New York Times bestselling authors in more than 33 U.S. states and five countries. In Book 4, authors share their honest reflections on Storytelling, Inspiration, & Research. These quotes reveal how writers tell stories, what inspires them, and how and why research is important to their processes. Authors quoted include David Baldacci, Steve Berry, Lisa Jewell, John Hart, Sophie Cousens, Ron Rash, C.J. Box, Craig Johnson, Wylie Cash, Brad Taylor, Charlie Lovett, Judy Goldman, Chris Fabry, Amber Smith, Tracy Clark, John Gilstrap, Kimmery Martin, A.J. Hartley, Clyde Edgerton, Jill McCorkle, Jason Mott, Mark de Castrique, Cathy Pickens, David Joy, Gavin Edwards, and many more. These writers offer insights with humility and responsibility to the craft of storytelling, and in the process, they share gems to guide us along the writing way. Award-winning author Aaron Gwyn says, “There are no stories where characters are just sitting in the recliner.” And Cliff Yeargin, a writer who puts humor in his mysteries, tells us about the essence of storytelling: “Nobody has ever picked up a book and told their friend, on page 271 is one of the greatest sentences I've ever read. They just say, hey, check this book out. It's one dang good story.” But writers often have difficulty explaining where or how their ideas originate. As New York Times bestselling author Ron Rash says, “I don't know where stories come from. I'm kind of a Jungian. I just think they're kind of out there. And it's not so much that we create them as we discover them.” And when it comes down to it, Nancy Stancill, an award-winning investigative reporter, says, “You're going to need research for most novels because even though novels are made up, there's usually a lot of underpinning of something that really happened.”