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The coolest ghostwriting blog on the planet.

Ding! Going down? An astonishing description of the World Trade Center collapse.

June 2, 2026June 3, 2026

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Mr. & Mrs. Vintage Typewriters, Bremerton, WA.

May 31, 2026June 3, 2026

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A.I. writing and publishing: Busted!

May 20, 2026June 13, 2026

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Why independent thinking matters to writers.

March 13, 2026June 3, 2026

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How desktop publishing put a Linotronic Imagesetter in my office.

March 12, 2026June 3, 2026

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The late-night drunk caller.

March 11, 2026June 3, 2026

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Screening ghostwriters: Run a simple test.

December 27, 2025June 3, 2026

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

November 20, 2025June 3, 2026

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The great dinner delay of August 3, 2015.

October 2, 2025June 3, 2026

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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...

I haven’t got 10 rules that guarantee success, though I promise I’d share them if I did. The truth is that I found success by stumbling off alone in a direction most people thought was a dead end, breaking all the 1990s shibboleths about children’s books in the process.

J.K. Rowling

I get up in the morning, torture a typewriter until it screams, then stop.

Clarence Budington Kelland

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

Christopher Hampton

The fact is, I don’t know where my ideas come from. Nor does any writer. The only real answer is to drink way too much coffee and buy yourself a desk that doesn’t collapse when you beat your head against it.

Douglas Adams

Have something to say, and say it as clearly as you can. That is the only secret.

Matthew Arnold

Keep a small can of WD-40 on your desk — away from any open flames — to remind yourself that if you don’t write daily, you will get rusty.

George Singleton

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

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

Gloria Steinem

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

E. B. White

A writer without interest or sympathy for the foibles of his fellow man is not conceivable as a writer.

Joseph Conrad

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

Lisa See

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

Reading and weeping opens the door to one’s heart, but writing and weeping opens the window to one’s soul.

M. K. Simmons

Thank your readers and the critics who praise you, and then ignore them. Write for the most intelligent, wittiest, wisest audience in the universe: Write to please yourself.

Harlan Ellison

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

Tom Clancy

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

Edward Albee

The road to ignorance is paved with good editors.

George Bernard Shaw

It’s an accepted fact that all writers are crazy; even the normal ones are weird.

William Goldman

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

Jim Morrison

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.