Writer's Digest Magazine: A Product Review

A product review about Writer’s Digest is the easiest thing to share with fellow writers. The magazine is an excellent resource on writing, creative or other.

I started using Writer’s Digest as a way of giving new life to my writing. I’ve read many good books on the writing craft, but a magazine brimming with lessons and tips and engaged with the upper tier of the publishing world—well that, in my opinion, was the best way for my writing to live. I have never regretted the decision.

Whether creative writing or publishing is your goal or not, Writer’s Digest provides the tools for expanding many components: grammar, publishing, agency, learning, books, authors, competition. So informative is each magazine that at any time I can incorporate the lessons in a single periodical into my writing.

Each magazine features an interview with a successful writer who affords readers their story and insight into their writing life. Also regularly featured is a theme that most articles or lessons (and there are many) center on, like productive writing time, MFA programs, or the best online markets. At the end of each magazine is the resourceful “Workbook” section, which is academic and focuses hard on various techniques of the writing craft.

What makes Writer’s Digest “pop” are the many fun, insightful, and interactive sections. If you’re interested in memoirs, the “5-Minute Memoir” allows you a 600-word reflection on the writing life. “Poetic Asides” lets you see how poetry is best done. “Breaking IN” presents debut authors and “Ask The Agent” looks into the world of a featured agent.

“Questions & Quandaries” is your chance to have your own questions answered by an editor, and “Your Story” is a fun writing prompt contest section. “Standout Markets” directs you to markets that might work for your writing. “Conference Scene” tells you where the next big writers shindig is going to be had. And “Reject A Hit” is the opportunity for you to play editor and write a humorous rejection letter to a published wonder, like Huckleberry Finn.

A recent facelift and additional subsections make reading delightfully interesting.

The parent company of the magazine features a large annual writing competition, over 80 years strong now. Every possible writing category is covered and it is worth the participation. This is the largest of several other competitions held throughout the year. Writer’s Digest gives you many avenues to flex your writing muscles.

The magazine is offered in one-year subscriptions starting at $24.96, which is 47 percent off newsstand rates. (Trust me. I paid $5.99 for my very first one, but it only took one to convince me!) It can also be purchased on the website (writersdigest.com) at $19.97 (58% less). In fact, you can start at the website, replete with free downloads and webinars, to grasp the breadth of information available to you in the magazine.

If you enjoy writing—and your composition can always use improvement—Writer’s Digest is indispensable. I doubt that you will get the range of information on the writing world in another single medium than you can find in this magazine. If you’re still not convinced, just go find it at a bookstore and finger through it. You’ll see that a writer’s desk without Writer’s Digest is simply unfathomable.