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.

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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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

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

Clarence Budington Kelland

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

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

Jodi Picoult

Easy reading is damn hard writing.

Nathaniel Hawthorne

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

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

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

Lawrence Wray

A writer is a world trapped in a person.

Victor Hugo

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

Romulus Linney

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

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

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

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

Jeanette Walls

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

Robert A. Heinlein

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

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

Mickey Spillane

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

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

William Goldman

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.