Blog

The coolest ghostwriting blog on the planet.

An honest email conversation about dealing with a client who wrote a problematic screenplay.

September 2, 2021June 4, 2026

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It’s time to put on my big boy pants.

August 28, 2021June 4, 2026

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We’ve begun producing our own videos!

July 31, 2021June 4, 2026

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Let’s talk about reputation and integrity.

July 27, 2021June 4, 2026

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A story about the filthiest boxing gym in New York.

April 26, 2021June 4, 2026

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Our new logo. What do you think?

April 2, 2021June 5, 2026

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The real-life word cops: Feds hoping to clarify language.

February 19, 2021June 5, 2026

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Novelists are moving into TV writers’ rooms.

February 11, 2021June 5, 2026

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There’s one wild screenplay awaiting a talented writer.

December 10, 2020June 5, 2026

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An interview with, and a new dark thriller novel by, Eric Shapiro.

October 8, 2020June 5, 2026

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Work on a computer that is disconnected from the Internet.

Zadie Smith

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

Matthew Arnold

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

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

Lisa See

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

E. B. White

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

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

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

Clarence Budington Kelland

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

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

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

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

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

Jeanette Walls

The fact is, I don’t know where my ideas come from. Nor does any writer. The only real answer is to drink way too much coffee and buy yourself a desk that doesn’t collapse when you beat your head against it.

Douglas Adams

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

Mickey Spillane

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

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

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

William Shawn

A writer is a world trapped in a person.

Victor Hugo

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.