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The coolest ghostwriting blog on the planet.

Another victim from Hawaii.

October 14, 2022June 4, 2026

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Wanted: Someone who works for free.

October 12, 2022June 4, 2026

Interesting. However, none of my writers works for free. And you don’t work for free, either. Can’t help you. Michael McKown Read More...

It’s tough being a writer. You kill several people and you lose your appetite.

August 7, 2022June 4, 2026

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Thoughts while reading a digital pile of screenplays.

August 3, 2022June 4, 2026

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If they don’t have a phone number, tell ’em to get lost.

June 10, 2022June 4, 2026

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The real-life, super immediate critical priority rush wedding toast story.

May 23, 2022June 4, 2026

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Useful advice from a successful screenwriter.

March 9, 2022June 4, 2026

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Three new wedding-related articles are now online.

February 23, 2022June 4, 2026

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The plus-size Jewish redneck lady has died: The ultimate obituary.

December 21, 2021June 4, 2026

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An angry man called me today about an apparent ghostwriting scam.

October 5, 2021June 4, 2026

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I have long felt that any reviewer who expresses rage and loathing for a novel is preposterous. He or she is like a person who has just put on full armor and attacked a hot fudge sundae or banana split.

Kurt Vonnegut, Jr

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

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

A writer is a world trapped in a person.

Victor Hugo

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

It is perfectly okay to write garbage — as long as you edit brilliantly.

C. J. Cherryh

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

William Goldman

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

In Hollywood, the woods are full of people that learned to write but evidently can’t read. If they could read their stuff, they’d stop writing.

Will Rogers

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

It begins with a character, usually, and once he stands up on his feet and begins to move, all I can do is trot along behind him with a paper and pencil, trying to keep up long enough to put down what he says and does.

William Faulkner

When writing a novel, that’s pretty much entirely what life turns into: “House burned down. Car stolen. Cat exploded. Did 1,500 easy words, so all in all it was a pretty good day.”

Neil Gaiman

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

Jim Morrison

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

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

Clarence Budington Kelland

A blank piece of paper is God’s way of telling us how hard it to be God.

Sidney Sheldon

Writing is not necessarily something to be ashamed of, but do it in private and wash your hands afterwards.

Robert A. Heinlein

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.