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The coolest ghostwriting blog on the planet.

Screening ghostwriters: Run a simple test.

December 27, 2025December 27, 2025

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How a professor caught students cheating by writing with A.I.

November 20, 2025

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The great dinner delay of August 3, 2015.

October 2, 2025October 9, 2025

For those who follow this blog, you know I love great writing. I found this on Quora yesterday. Apparently it was posted in Read More...

Which to write first – the manuscript or screenplay?

September 3, 2025October 9, 2025

Write the manuscript first, or the screenplay? By- Michael McKown Co-founder & president, Ghostwriters Central, Inc. Book or Read More...

xAI’s Grok chatbot adds us to its list of recommended ghostwriters.

August 30, 2025October 9, 2025

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Hire a non-fiction ghostwriter

August 25, 2025October 9, 2025

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How to spot ghostwriting scams

August 23, 2025August 24, 2025

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Hire a ghostwriter for your novel

August 23, 2025August 25, 2025

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Why hire a ghostwriter for a screenplay

August 21, 2025August 25, 2025

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Using a ghostwriter for a memoir or autobiography

August 20, 2025August 25, 2025

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You can always edit a bad page. You can’t edit a blank page.

Jodi Picoult

I write the last line, and then I write the line before that. I find myself writing backwards for a while, until I have a solid sense of how that ending sounds and feels. You have to know what your voice sounds like at the end of the story, because it tells you how to sound when you begin.

John Irving

You may be able to take a break from writing, but you won’t be able to take a break from being a writer.

Stephen Leigh

Writing is the only thing that, when I do it, I don’t feel I should be doing something else.

Gloria Steinem

The road to ignorance is paved with good editors.

George Bernard Shaw

Writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.

E. L. Doctorow

It is only natural to pattern yourself after someone. But you can’t just copy someone. If you like someone’s work, the important thing is to be exposed to everything that person has been exposed to.

Bob Dylan

If you haven’t got an idea, start a story anyway. You can always throw it away, and maybe by the time you get to the fourth page you will have an idea, and you’ll only have to throw away the first three pages.

William C. Gault

The first chapter sells the book; the last chapter sells the next book.

Mickey Spillane

The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do.

Thomas Jefferson

My aim is to put down what I see and what I feel in the best and simplest way I can tell it.

Ernest Hemingway

The reason 99% of all stories written are not bought by editors is very simple. Editors never buy manuscripts that are left on the closet shelf at home.

John Campbell

Asking a working writer what he thinks about critics is like asking a lamppost how it feels about dogs.

Christopher Hampton

Read a thousand books and your words will flow like a river.

Lisa See

I do not over-intellectualize the production process. I try to keep it simple: Tell the damned story.

Tom Clancy

It took me fifteen years to discover I had no talent for writing, but I couldn’t give it up because by that time I was too famous.

Robert Benchley

Anecdotes don’t make good stories. Generally, I dig down underneath them so far that the story that finally comes out is not what people thought their anecdotes were about.

Alice Munro

Critics are people who sit on the mountaintop and look down on the battlefield. When the fighting is finished, they take it upon themselves to come down from the mountain and shoot the survivors.

Robert Altman

Everybody walks past a thousand story ideas every day. The good writers are the ones who see five or six of them. Most people don’t see any.

Orson Scott Card

Easy reading is damn hard writing.