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 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.
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.
What I loved most about calling myself a reporter was that it gave me an excuse to show up anyplace.
Keep a small can of WD-40 on your desk — away from any open flames — to remind yourself that if you don’t write daily, you will get rusty.
A writer without interest or sympathy for the foibles of his fellow man is not conceivable as a writer.
If the sex scene doesn’t make you want to do it — whatever it is they’re doing — it hasn’t been written right.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Reading and weeping opens the door to one’s heart, but writing and weeping opens the window to one’s soul.
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.
Writing is the only thing that, when I do it, I don’t feel I should be doing something else.
























