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The coolest ghostwriting blog on the planet.

A.I. writing and publishing: Busted!

May 20, 2026May 20, 2026

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What screenwriters get wrong about dialogue.

March 14, 2026March 14, 2026

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Why independent thinking matters to writers.

March 13, 2026March 13, 2026

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How desktop publishing put a Linotronic Imagesetter in my office.

March 12, 2026March 13, 2026

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The late-night drunk caller.

March 11, 2026March 13, 2026

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Screening ghostwriters: Run a simple test.

December 27, 2025December 27, 2025

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

November 20, 2025

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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

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Work on a computer that is disconnected from the Internet.

Zadie Smith

If my poetry aims to achieve anything, it’s to deliver people from the limited ways in which they see and feel.

Jim Morrison

It always comes down to characters, and individual stories about courage.

Steven Bochco

Socially, a journalist fits in somewhere between a whore and a bartender. But spiritually he stands beside Galileo. He knows the world is round.

Sherman Reilly Duffy

Plot is, I think, the good writer’s last resort and the dullard’s first choice.

Stephen King

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

Biography should be written by an acute enemy.

Arthur Balfour

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

Jodi Picoult

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.

Robert Benchley

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.

Orson Scott Card

If you wait for inspiration to write, you’re not a writer. You’re a waiter.

Dan Poynter

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

Michael Burke

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

Just don’t be boring!

Robert Liebmann

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

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.

Truman Capote Quote

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

Roald Dahl

In Hollywood, the woods are full of people that learned to write but evidently can’t read. If they could read their stuff, they’d stop writing.

Will Rogers

When writing a novel, that’s pretty much entirely what life turns into: “House burned down. Car stolen. Cat exploded. Did 1,500 easy words, so all in all it was a pretty good day.”