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The coolest ghostwriting blog on the planet.

An alleged SEO expert emailed me. This is what followed.

November 4, 2023June 4, 2026

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The descriptive powers of the great John Houseman.

September 27, 2023June 4, 2026

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The A.I. bot says: “Get out of the chair. Go have a drink. I’ll do the writing.”

July 24, 2023June 4, 2026

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The U.S. editor-in-chief of TechRadar.com tries to get ChatGPT to write a screenplay.

June 9, 2023June 4, 2026

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“And no one can talk to a horse of course.” Wrong!

May 18, 2023June 4, 2026

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The last of the three-dot journalists.

April 21, 2023June 4, 2026

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Unmarked graves out past Terlingua

April 6, 2023June 4, 2026

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Words + emotion + lies = propaganda. Meet Joseph Goebbels.

February 26, 2023June 4, 2026

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What the boss does for fun. Buckle up. Yee-haw!

January 20, 2023June 4, 2026

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This is really what it’s like to be an editor.

December 30, 2022June 4, 2026

I came across this comical image while searching for a photo to illustrate our new page on editing and proofreading services. It Read More...

I haven’t got 10 rules that guarantee success, though I promise I’d share them if I did. The truth is that I found success by stumbling off alone in a direction most people thought was a dead end, breaking all the 1990s shibboleths about children’s books in the process.

J.K. Rowling

No one can write decently who is distrustful of the reader’s intelligence or whose attitude is patronizing.

E. B. White

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

Gloria Steinem

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

Oscar Wilde

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

Michael Burke

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

If you haven’t got an idea, start a story anyway. You can always throw it away, and maybe by the time you get to the fourth page you will have an idea, and you’ll only have to throw away the first three pages.

William C. Gault

Just don’t be boring!

Robert Liebmann

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

Jim Morrison

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

Asking a working writer what he thinks about critics is like asking a lamppost how it feels about dogs.

Christopher Hampton

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

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

M. K. Simmons

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

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

Biography should be written by an acute enemy.

Arthur Balfour

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

Romulus Linney

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

The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do.

Thomas Jefferson

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