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, 2015May 9, 2025

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...

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

Clarence Budington Kelland

Editor: A person employed by a newspaper, whose business it is to separate the wheat from the chaff, and to see that the chaff is printed.

Elbert Hubbard

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

Roald Dahl

If you have an idea that you genuinely think is good, don’t let some idiot talk you out of it.

Stan Lee

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

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

Jodi Picoult

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

Tom Clancy

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

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

G.K. Chesterton

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

William Shawn

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

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

Edward Albee

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

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 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

Easy reading is damn hard writing.

Nathaniel Hawthorne

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 one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use in reading it at all.