We spend so much of our writing time perfecting the beginnings of our stories that we might be neglecting the endings—and literary agents can tell. While it's vital to have a strong start to your manuscript to get an agent's attention, if you aren't able to carry that momentum through to the end, it can be the difference between getting representation and being told, "Thank you, but no."

In this episode of Writer's Digest Presents, editor Michael Woodson chats with literary agent Allegra Martschenko about how we can perfect our endings to help us land that book deal.

SEASON FINALE. With the new year right around the corner, it might be time to start thinking about your creativity in 2026. For writers, writing retreats offer uninterrupted time to focus on your craft, build your writerly community, and receive feedback from publishing experts.

Say you want to learn more about woodworking, but you're not quite ready to follow a how-to video on YouTube and just want to learn as much as you can about the craft. So, you turn to your local bookstore for the best how-to book on woodworking. Publishing has long been the answer to the "how" question of our hobbies, but writing about what you do for a living is a very different task than doing what you do for a living.

In this episode of "Writer's Digest Presents," Michael Woodson chats with interior designer and author Alexandra Gater about the process of writing her how-to book, Own Your Space, where she offers advice for other professionals looking to write their own books, the importance of the outline in nonfiction writing, her literary agent experience, and more.

If blood and violence aren't your thing, but you love a palpable atmosphere and aren't afraid of a few ghosts, gothic fiction is right for you. The gothic and southern gothic horror sub-genres exemplify the notion that no matter what kind of reader you are, you can always find a great book in any genre.

Fall is upon us and a new school year has begun. Kids are lining hallways and rushing to class, clutching their school work, and new books to read. Between independent reading and required reading, keeping young readers engaged with reading helps build lifelong readers from the start.

In this episode of "Writer's Digest Presents," middle-grade author Alyssa Colman sits down to discuss how to keep young readers engaged, how writing what she wanted to know more about kept her engaged, and her new historical fiction, Where Only Storms Grow, now available.

The conversation around publishing journeys is often binary: You either try traditionally publishing or choose self-publishing. But the reality for many authors is a combination of both. Author Chips Pons self-published his debut novel, You & I, Rewritten, in 2022. Now, he returns to bookshelves with her second novel, and first traditionally published, Winging It with You.

In this episode of "Writer's Digest Presents," we chat with Chip about all things romance, from writing the will-they-won't-they scenes to infusing genuine miscommunication that everyone can relate to.

When you tackle historical nonfiction, you're offering doing more than simply putting to paper the events of the past. In author and journalist Robert Fieseler's experience, it meant hunting down sealed documents from a state that never wanted this history exposed, and it meant uncovering hundreds of names redacted from records and conducting countless hours of interviews—all before the actual writing takes place.

How do you write what you know? By writing fiction based on your life. This doesn't mean writing memoir or simply changing the names of the people in your life: It could be a passing comment you hear at the bus stop, or someone's missing shoe you notice in the street, or it could even just be a feeling from a time in your life..the list goes on and on!

Writer's Digest is heading to England! From September 12-20, you can join managing editor Moriah Richard and literary agent Amy Collins in London and Bath for the writing retreat of a lifetime! Listen here as they are in conversation with editor-in-chief Amy Jones about what to expect on the retreat, what they're most looking forward to, and more!

The first job of a writer is to actually write their book. The next is to promote it. But getting in front of a camera or microphone and talking to a live audience isn't as easy at it may sound, and authors who are used to having thousands of words in a book to lean on may need to come up with just a few minutes of sound bites to help them get their point across.

In this episode of "Writer's Digest Presents," content editor Michael Woodson chats with media coach and author Paula Rizzo about why it's important for writers to learn to be media-savvy, the different kinds of media that can help them promote their work, and how to have every possible answer ready in their back pocket.