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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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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

Writing has laws of perspective, of light and shade, just as painting does, or music. If you are born knowing them, fine. If not, learn them. Then rearrange the rules to suit yourself.

Truman Capote Quote

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

Substitute “damn” every time you’re inclined to write “very”; your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be.

Mark Twain

Ever heard of a carpenter not going to work because he has “carpenter’s block”? If a writer can’t write, it’s because he doesn’t really want to, he isn’t ready to get it on paper or he’s just plain lazy.

Chet Cunningham

Do you know what a playwright is? A playwright is someone who lets his guts hang out on the stage.

Edward Albee

Work on a computer that is disconnected from the Internet.

Zadie Smith

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

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

Lisa See

Biography should be written by an acute enemy.

Arthur Balfour

No one can write decently who is distrustful of the reader’s intelligence or whose attitude is patronizing.

E. B. White

A true author, no matter the medium, is an artist with godlike knowledge of his subject, and the proof of his authorship is that his pages smack of authority.

Robert McKee

I don’t care if a reader hates one of my stories, just as long as he finishes the book.

Roald Dahl

My own experience is that once a story has been written, one has to cross out the beginning and the end. It is there that we authors do most of our lying.

Anton Chekhov

Do not place a photograph of your favorite author on your desk, especially if the author is one of the famous ones who committed suicide.

Roddy Doyle

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

If my poetry aims to achieve anything, it’s to deliver people from the limited ways in which they see and feel.

Jim Morrison

Stories are never too long or too short. They’re too interesting or too boring.

William Shawn

Don’t annoy an author, you’ll end up in their book and you won’t look good.

Lawrence Wray

If you start with a bang, you won’t end with a whimper.