Blog

The coolest ghostwriting blog on the planet.

What screenwriters get wrong about dialogue.

March 14, 2026March 14, 2026

...

Why independent thinking matters to writers.

March 13, 2026March 13, 2026

...

How desktop publishing put a Linotronic Imagesetter in my office.

March 12, 2026March 13, 2026

...

The late-night drunk caller.

March 11, 2026March 13, 2026

...

Screening ghostwriters: Run a simple test.

December 27, 2025December 27, 2025

...

How a professor caught students cheating by writing with A.I.

November 20, 2025

...

The great dinner delay of August 3, 2015.

October 2, 2025October 9, 2025

For those who follow this blog, you know I love great writing. I found this on Quora yesterday. Apparently it was posted in Read More...

Which to write first – the manuscript or screenplay?

September 3, 2025October 9, 2025

Write the manuscript first, or the screenplay? By- Michael McKown Co-founder & president, Ghostwriters Central, Inc. Book or Read More...

xAI’s Grok chatbot adds us to its list of recommended ghostwriters.

August 30, 2025October 9, 2025

...

Hire a non-fiction ghostwriter

August 25, 2025October 9, 2025

...

Just don’t be boring!

Robert Liebmann

Books aren’t written, they’re rewritten. Including your own. It is one of the hardest things to accept, especially after the seventh rewrite hasn’t quite done it.

Michael Crichton

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

Tom Clancy

Good instincts usually tell you what to do long before your head has figured it out.

Michael Burke

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

Jodi Picoult

Every writer with half a brain knows to surround himself or herself with editors who are smarter, far more articulate and infinitely better looking.

Chris Claremont

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

Stan Lee

I have long felt that any reviewer who expresses rage and loathing for a novel is preposterous. He or she is like a person who has just put on full armor and attacked a hot fudge sundae or banana split.

Kurt Vonnegut, Jr

You may be able to take a break from writing, but you won’t be able to take a break from being a writer.

Stephen Leigh

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.

E. L. Doctorow

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.

Harlan Ellison

A writer is a world trapped in a person.

Victor Hugo

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.

John Irving

To me, movies and music go hand in hand. When I’m writing a script, one of the first things I do is find the music I’m going to play for the opening sequence.

Quentin Tarantino

Have something to say, and say it as clearly as you can. That is the only secret.

Matthew Arnold

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

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

Asking a working writer what he thinks about critics is like asking a lamppost how it feels about dogs.

Christopher Hampton

Biography should be written by an acute enemy.

Arthur Balfour

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