Every few years, I try to review the list of what WD thinks are the best websites for writers, as included each year in the Writer’s Yearbook. You don’t need to read the list every year; for 2025, 91 were included last year with only ten new “additions”. They don’t say which 10 they dropped to make room.
The first set, Creativity, has 6 sites listed, all repeats. I’ve looked at the sites before, but I confess I find nothing “inspiring” in most. Many are light on craft and heavy on reading recommendations in multiple ways, but they do interviews with writers that may reveal their creative process. It includes one software package (MasterWriter). However, I confess the site TerribleMinds.com/ramble is worth its weight in gold, assuming you’re willing to do some panning. The blog part that you want to read is primarily from Chuck Wendig, a very candid and opinionated writer when it comes to writing and the publishing business. That might sound bad, but it isn’t. He definitely has clear views, but he’ll tell you why he has those views and what experiences he has had, and he is very transparent. When he started sharing his experiences, some people thought he was nuts. He shared details about # of books sold, for example. He talked about things he did to boost sales. Practical ground-level guerrilla writing. When he is in that zone and sharing his experiences, there may be no one better to share. It’s not about craft or how to tweak your POV, it’s about the business of writing. And his candidness makes it easy to choose which pieces you agree with or not.
The second set, Live Streams, Podcasts, YouTube, has another 5 static sites from previous lists and 1 new one. You’d almost expect this list to change yearly, with the waxing and waning of public fickleness, but it doesn’t. I’m not a podcast guy, I don’t have a good setup where I can listen easily to podcasts even though I watch a lot of episodic television. Just not my jam. However, I like a site called Grammar Girl (QuickAndDirtyTips.com/grammar-girl), which is partly about writing and partly about language in general. The new one, called The Shit No One Tells You About Writing (TheShitAboutWriting.com) focuses on publishing and agents, which is generally done to death in every site or magazine out there, but they have a decent framework for going beyond the basics.
The next group is called Writing Advice, and while helpful to many, I do not personally find them useful. There are 7 static sites from previous years, and they are hit-and-miss with me. I love the premise of DIY MFA (DIYMFA.com), that you may not be able to go to a university and complete a Masters of Fine Arts, but perhaps you can craft your own. Good premise, partial delivery. To be honest, many MFA programs are decent without a residency requirement that you can do through various online platforms if you feel you need one. It is more like a curated set of materials that would replicate some of what you would learn in an MFA instead of creating your own MFA, if that makes sense. There is also, and it may be what turns me off, a lot of commercial sites in the list that are of the form “pay me to help you write better”. They’re undoubtedly decent, the ones in the list, but if I had to choose between King on Writing or any one of Lawrence Block’s books on writing vs. these sites, I think I know where I would start. I’m usually underwhelmed overall, cynical wannabe that I am.
The fourth group, Everything Agents, almost refutes my idea above of the new take from the site in podcasts. Except it is the fact that it IS a podcast about agents that makes it stand out, another form of consumption. The four sites in this group about agents are more traditional fodder, all static. It isn’t an area that interests me, so I tend to skip over it quickly.
Group 5, oddly labelled General Resources, has 8 repeated sites and 1 new one. I mentioned it was an oddly named category because several of them seem to initially be about diversity in general — style guides, editors of colour, etc. Until you realize they are more about “writers” as “labour working together”. Not just in the form of a union, but also a guild, or advice on how to be a freelancer. The new addition to the list is about writers with disabilities. However, perhaps the most significant resource in the list is Writer Beware (WriterBeware.blog). If you have virus protection on your computer to stop malware, the Writer Beware list is the writer’s equivalent to make sure you are not scammed. If the offer seems too good to be true, check here first.
When you get to Group 6, the website changes its approach. For the next 46 websites, they’re broken down by Genres:
- Children’s Middle Grade, Young Adult: 6 sites, no change from previous years…my favourite is one that is aimed at supporting teenage writers (as opposed to adults writing young adult) called Go Teen Writers (GoTeenWriters.com);
- Creative Non-Fiction: 2 sites, no change from previous years, with two magazines — BrevityMag.com and HippocampusMagazine.com;
- Freelance: 3 sites, no change from previous years, and some practical resources for freelancers including rates to charge, although the WD yearbook includes ranges already;
- Historical: 2 sites, no change from previous years, including the Historical Novel Society–North America, which has it’s annual well-planned conference this year in Vegas in June (HNS-Conference.com);
- Horror: 2 sites, no change from previous years;
- Journalism: 5 sites, including 2 rival stalwarts — the American Society of Journalists and Authors and the Society of Professional Journalists — and adds 3 DEI sites for Indigenous Journalists, Black Journalists, and Hispanic Journalists;
- Mystery / Thriller: This is my jam, and I always hope for something new that I haven’t heard of, but it has 4 of the same 5 again from last year this year — Crime Writers of Color (CrimeWritersOfColor.com), Kill Zones (KillZoneBlog.com), Mystery & Suspense Magazine (MysteryAndSuspense.com) and a biggie — Mystery Writers of America (MysteryWriters.org), before you get to the brand new one, dun dun dun, oh, it’s just the well-known Sisters in Crime (SistersInCrime.org), yawn;
- Poetry: 3 sites, no change from previous years;
- Romance: 4 sites, 2 old and 2 new, with a healthy activist bent to the chosen sites (fight the patriarchy, justify romance as real reading, yawn);
- Science Fiction / Fantasy: 3 sites, no change from previous years;
- Screenwriting: 4 sites, no changes from previous years;
- Short fiction: 4 sites, no changes from previous years, and I confess I have virtually no interest in most of it, as it heavily gears towards either flash fiction or slices of life stories that are heavily descriptive but with nothing resolved;
- Spiritual: 1 site, no change, only a Christian perspective represented;
- Travel: 2 sites, no change from previous years, and I find it a bit disappointing…there are lots of great opportunities out there, and yet the best they have to offer is a professional association more formal than hustle economy or new content creators, plus a personal (albeit solid) site Pitch Travel Write (PitchTravelWrite.com);
Group 7 looks at publishing news / resources, with 4 sites, and no change from previous years. Separate from the big commercial sites, it does include Jane Friedman (JaneFriedman.com)…it’s kind of funny; I slam the travel list as they don’t have more creative portals except for a personal site and yet laud publishing because it includes Jane’s personal site! In the past, I would have touted ThePassiveVoice.com but I was shocked to find out he has stopped publishing (I can’t find any explanation why online — last public post was last April and the site is just gone off the ‘net. A very sad update for me, I loved his site…no one else did his kind of voluminous curation of so much, it was like having your own newsfeed of the best in publishing and writing. I have considered multiple times a similar model to him with a different niche, but just never found a topic that would a) fire my passion nor b) wasn’t already available in some way in another site. I miss David’s work.)
Group 8 was a broader category listed as Jobs / Markets. It has 4 sites, with no change from previous years, and to be frank, it’s a weird category. There are probably another 10 in the list that are the same thing, just for another preset genre. So why are these ones just “general” yet contain a couple targeted to sub-genres? I don’t know.
Group 9 is grouped as Writing Communities, a mixed bag of nine sites with two “new” additions. Fan fiction/fandom in many forms; diversity and excellence in creative writing (could be with a dozen other sites listed above); or shared writing spaces like Gutsy Great Novelist (GutsyGreatNovelist.com) are in the list. I find it a bit funny, though, that after they talk about all the various sites, they still list the classic Reddit forum of r/writing (Reddit.com/r/writing), that a generic tool like Reddit makes the list.
Group 10 targets Indie Publishing with the last 6 sites, no changes from previous years.
My reactions
Overall, I find myself underwhelmed. I didn’t see much of what I was hoping for: people doing things differently and perhaps in ways that have nothing to do with representation / DEI. Those issues are important, but they aren’t my personal issues. I don’t have any insights to share or a writing platform or following to help amplify the voices of others. I’m glad people are doing those things, they’re essential, but they’re not what I’m looking to find.
Part of what I’m looking for is something akin to an author like Lawrence Block or Stephen King, a screenwriter like Michael Jamin, or a TV writer like Ken Levine, creating a framework that people could understand how it all fits together.
Which is a bit of a problem for someone like me when I find websites with tons of loose content. I, myself, think in frameworks. I don’t think in anecdotes or “maybe in this case, maybe in that case”. I like some of that premise, but it doesn’t help me learn. The sites like DIYMFA are closer in premise, if not delivery to what I’m looking for, I think. I like the Save the Cat! approach as it comes with a framework, but I’d like structures applicable to other story structures, too.
Alas, I’ll have to curate more of my own resources. Maybe starting with conferences.
