Post number one. Hi there!

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Welcome to the Ghostwriters Central blog. This blog will be authored by me, for the time being. We do hope you will find it to be useful, informative or entertaining. Or all three. --Michael McKown.

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

June 2, 2026June 3, 2026

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

May 31, 2026June 3, 2026

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A.I. writing and publishing: Busted!

May 20, 2026June 13, 2026

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Why independent thinking matters to writers.

March 13, 2026June 3, 2026

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How desktop publishing put a Linotronic Imagesetter in my office.

March 12, 2026June 3, 2026

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The late-night drunk caller.

March 11, 2026June 3, 2026

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Screening ghostwriters: Run a simple test.

December 27, 2025June 3, 2026

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

November 20, 2025June 3, 2026

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The great dinner delay of August 3, 2015.

October 2, 2025June 3, 2026

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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...

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

G.K. Chesterton

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

Stephen King

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

It is perfectly okay to write garbage — as long as you edit brilliantly.

C. J. Cherryh

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

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

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

Jim Morrison

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

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

Matthew Arnold

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

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

Lisa See

Writing is not necessarily something to be ashamed of, but do it in private and wash your hands afterwards.

Robert A. Heinlein

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

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

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

Don’t annoy an author, you’ll end up in their book and you won’t look good.

Lawrence Wray

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

Sidney Sheldon

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

Steven Bochco

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

To me, movies and music go hand in hand. When I’m writing a script, one of the first things I do is find the music I’m going to play for the opening sequence.