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The coolest ghostwriting blog on the planet.

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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Hire a non-fiction ghostwriter

August 25, 2025October 9, 2025

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Easy reading is damn hard writing.

Nathaniel Hawthorne

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

Jeanette Walls

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

Anecdotes don’t make good stories. Generally, I dig down underneath them so far that the story that finally comes out is not what people thought their anecdotes were about.

Alice Munro

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

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

Writing is the only thing that, when I do it, I don’t feel I should be doing something else.

Gloria Steinem

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 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

Keep a small can of WD-40 on your desk — away from any open flames — to remind yourself that if you don’t write daily, you will get rusty.

George Singleton

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

Steven Bochco

Do not place a photograph of your favorite author on your desk, especially if the author is one of the famous ones who committed suicide.

Roddy Doyle

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

Dan Poynter

A blank piece of paper is God’s way of telling us how hard it to be God.

Sidney Sheldon

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

Mickey Spillane

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

Stephen King

I get up in the morning, torture a typewriter until it screams, then stop.

Clarence Budington Kelland

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

Jim Morrison

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

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.”