Trust and Victories demonstrate again that Higgins is an artful novelist as well as a popular one; further evidence of his seriousness appears in On Writing: Advice for Those Who Write to Publish (Or Would Like To) (1990), which evidently reflects the lessons which Higgins offers to his creative writing students. Its chapters consist of reprinted stories or passages preceded and followed by Higgins's pragmatic observations on the writer's intentions and achievements. The authors are largely those whom he admires — John O'Hara (especially), Hemingway, Lardner, Thurber, and Marquand (and, as well, Gay Talese and Irwin Shaw).

Chapter 6 is particularly interesting as it offers Higgins's explication of his own 1988 short story, "A Small Matter of Consumer Protection."