Post number one. Hi there!

19 Nov, 2015

Welcome to the Ghostwriters Central blog. This blog will be authored by me, for the time being. We do hope you will find it to be useful, informative or entertaining. Or all three. --Michael McKown.

Post number one. Hi there!

November 19, 2015June 6, 2026

Welcome to the Ghostwriters Central blog. This blog will be authored by me, for the time being. We do hope you will find it to be Read More...

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

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

Christopher Hampton

If the sex scene doesn’t make you want to do it — whatever it is they’re doing — it hasn’t been written right.

Sloan Wilson

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

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

C. J. Cherryh

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

Writers aren’t people exactly. Or, if they’re any good, they’re a whole lot of people trying so hard to be one person.

F. Scott Fitzgerald

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

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

Jodi Picoult

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

A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author.

G.K. Chesterton

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

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

Lisa See

I have a structured songwriting process. I start with the music and try to come up with musical ideas, then the melody, then the hook, and the lyrics come last.

John Legend

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

Tom Clancy

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

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

Edward Albee

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

M. K. Simmons

There are three primal urges in human beings: Food, sex, and rewriting someone else’s play.

Romulus Linney

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.