Blog

The coolest ghostwriting blog on the planet.

Ding! Going down? An astonishing description of the World Trade Center collapse.

June 2, 2026June 3, 2026

...

Mr. & Mrs. Vintage Typewriters, Bremerton, WA.

May 31, 2026June 3, 2026

...

A.I. writing and publishing: Busted!

May 20, 2026June 13, 2026

...

Why independent thinking matters to writers.

March 13, 2026June 3, 2026

...

How desktop publishing put a Linotronic Imagesetter in my office.

March 12, 2026June 3, 2026

...

The late-night drunk caller.

March 11, 2026June 3, 2026

...

Screening ghostwriters: Run a simple test.

December 27, 2025June 3, 2026

...

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

November 20, 2025June 3, 2026

...

The great dinner delay of August 3, 2015.

October 2, 2025June 3, 2026

...

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...

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

Dan Poynter

Do you know what a playwright is? A playwright is someone who lets his guts hang out on the stage.

Edward Albee

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

Raymond Chandler

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.”

Neil Gaiman

It begins with a character, usually, and once he stands up on his feet and begins to move, all I can do is trot along behind him with a paper and pencil, trying to keep up long enough to put down what he says and does.

William Faulkner

If you start with a bang, you won’t end with a whimper.

T.S. Eliot

Editor: A person employed by a newspaper, whose business it is to separate the wheat from the chaff, and to see that the chaff is printed.

Elbert Hubbard

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

Romulus Linney

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

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

A true author, no matter the medium, is an artist with godlike knowledge of his subject, and the proof of his authorship is that his pages smack of authority.

Robert McKee

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

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

M. K. Simmons

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

Steven Bochco

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

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

William Goldman

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

No writer has ever yet been known to hang himself as long as he had another chapter left.

Thomas Wolfe

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

Michael Burke

A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author.