Post number one. Hi there!

Welcome to the Ghostwriters Central blog. This blog will be authored by me, for the time being. We do hope you will find it to be useful, informative or entertaining. Or all three. --Michael McKown.

Post number one. Hi there!

November 19, 2015June 6, 2026

Welcome to the Ghostwriters Central blog. This blog will be authored by me, for the time being. We do hope you will find it to be Read More...

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

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

Read a thousand books and your words will flow like a river.

Lisa See

A writer without interest or sympathy for the foibles of his fellow man is not conceivable as a writer.

Joseph Conrad

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

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

Raymond Chandler

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.

F. Scott Fitzgerald

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

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

Jodi Picoult

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

Stephen King

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

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

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.

Robert Altman

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

Matthew Arnold

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

Romulus Linney

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

What I loved most about calling myself a reporter was that it gave me an excuse to show up anyplace.

Jeanette Walls

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

It’s an accepted fact that all writers are crazy; even the normal ones are weird.

William Goldman

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