Because every
story begins
with words

Video: What hiring a ghostwriter will NOT solve.

I have a structured songwriting process. I start with the music and try to come up with musical ideas, then the melody, then the hook, and the lyrics come last.

John Legend

There are three primal urges in human beings: Food, sex, and rewriting someone else’s play.

Romulus Linney

Ever heard of a carpenter not going to work because he has “carpenter’s block”? If a writer can’t write, it’s because he doesn’t really want to, he isn’t ready to get it on paper or he’s just plain lazy.

Chet Cunningham

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

Steven Bochco

Biography should be written by an acute enemy.

Arthur Balfour

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

The character that lasts is an ordinary guy with some extraordinary qualities.

Raymond Chandler

The first chapter sells the book; the last chapter sells the next book.

Mickey Spillane

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

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.

John Campbell

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

If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use in reading it at all.

Oscar Wilde

Just don’t be boring!

Robert Liebmann

It is perfectly okay to write garbage — as long as you edit brilliantly.

C. J. Cherryh

Reading and weeping opens the door to one’s heart, but writing and weeping opens the window to one’s soul.

M. K. Simmons

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.

Mark Twain

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

My aim is to put down what I see and what I feel in the best and simplest way I can tell it.

Ernest Hemingway

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

Matthew Arnold

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