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The coolest ghostwriting blog on the planet.

Another victim from Hawaii.

October 14, 2022June 4, 2026

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Wanted: Someone who works for free.

October 12, 2022June 4, 2026

Interesting. However, none of my writers works for free. And you don’t work for free, either. Can’t help you. Michael McKown Read More...

It’s tough being a writer. You kill several people and you lose your appetite.

August 7, 2022June 4, 2026

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Thoughts while reading a digital pile of screenplays.

August 3, 2022June 4, 2026

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If they don’t have a phone number, tell ’em to get lost.

June 10, 2022June 4, 2026

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The real-life, super immediate critical priority rush wedding toast story.

May 23, 2022June 4, 2026

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Useful advice from a successful screenwriter.

March 9, 2022June 4, 2026

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Three new wedding-related articles are now online.

February 23, 2022June 4, 2026

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The plus-size Jewish redneck lady has died: The ultimate obituary.

December 21, 2021June 4, 2026

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An angry man called me today about an apparent ghostwriting scam.

October 5, 2021June 4, 2026

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

T.S. Eliot

Books aren’t written, they’re rewritten. Including your own. It is one of the hardest things to accept, especially after the seventh rewrite hasn’t quite done it.

Michael Crichton

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

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

Dan Poynter

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

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

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

I’m writing a book. I’ve got the page numbers done.

Stephen Wright

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

William Goldman

Work on a computer that is disconnected from the Internet.

Zadie Smith

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

Jodi Picoult

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

A writer is a world trapped in a person.

Victor Hugo

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

Christopher Hampton

Biography should be written by an acute enemy.

Arthur Balfour

Socially, a journalist fits in somewhere between a whore and a bartender. But spiritually he stands beside Galileo. He knows the world is round.

Sherman Reilly Duffy

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

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

Stories are never too long or too short. They’re too interesting or too boring.

William Shawn

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