I’m reconfiguring Ghostwriters Central. The first change was to bring Kate Jonez on board. She’s a marvelous writer, Read More...
Socially, a journalist fits in somewhere between a whore and a bartender. But spiritually he stands beside Galileo. He knows the world is round.
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.
My aim is to put down what I see and what I feel in the best and simplest way I can tell it.
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.
Every writer with half a brain knows to surround himself or herself with editors who are smarter, far more articulate and infinitely better looking.
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.
No writer has ever yet been known to hang himself as long as he had another chapter left.
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.
A writer without interest or sympathy for the foibles of his fellow man is not conceivable as a writer.
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.
No one can write decently who is distrustful of the reader’s intelligence or whose attitude is patronizing.
Reading and weeping opens the door to one’s heart, but writing and weeping opens the window to one’s soul.
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.
Writing is not necessarily something to be ashamed of, but do it in private and wash your hands afterwards.

























