It was about two weeks ago when Ghostwriters Central founding partner Michael McKown texted his fellow founding partner and told him to Read More...
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.
Asking a working writer what he thinks about critics is like asking a lamppost how it feels about dogs.
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.
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.
You may be able to take a break from writing, but you won’t be able to take a break from being a writer.
If my poetry aims to achieve anything, it’s to deliver people from the limited ways in which they see and feel.
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.
Writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.
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.
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.
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.
Writing is not necessarily something to be ashamed of, but do it in private and wash your hands afterwards.
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.
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.
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.

























