It was about two weeks ago when Ghostwriters Central founding partner Michael McKown texted his fellow founding partner and told him to Read More...
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.
A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
If you haven’t got an idea, start a story anyway. You can always throw it away, and maybe by the time you get to the fourth page you will have an idea, and you’ll only have to throw away the first three pages.
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.
My aim is to put down what I see and what I feel in the best and simplest way I can tell it.
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.
Asking a working writer what he thinks about critics is like asking a lamppost how it feels about dogs.
If my poetry aims to achieve anything, it’s to deliver people from the limited ways in which they see and feel.

























