College and university faculty members specializing in early childhood education face some unique challenges in scholarly writing. The purpose of this research was to use open-ended interviews as a way to gather the collective wisdom of a group of key informants about academic writing and publishing in the field. Twenty-two editors and/or authors, ranging from vastly experienced to beginners, shared their insights on scholarly writing by discussing the purposes, strategies, and challenges associated with contributing to the early childhood education through their published work. Data analysis of the interview transcripts resulted in a remarkably consistent theme across all interviewees; namely, that a commitment to young children was the governing principle and that published manuscripts must have practical significance in order to advance the field. A verbatim transcript of all 22 interviews was read, re-read, and annotated to produce emergent themes. Excerpts from the interviews were then collected into case nodes using "NVivo10" qualitative data analysis software. Data were clustered into five themes. Sternberg's (Beyond IQ: a triarchic theory of human intelligence. Cambridge University Press, New York, 1985, The triarchic mind: a new theory of human intelligence. Viking, New York 1988) theory of intelligence and his definition of wisdom (2004) also were used as preset categories for data analysis. Collectively, the intelligence and wisdom of these accomplished professionals offers guidance to aspiring authors to become involved in writing, editing, and publishing academic work and serves as a tool for further reflection among experienced authors in the field of early childhood education.