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Our ghostwriting blog posts.

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

May 18, 2023May 18, 2023

Fifty-seven years after the hit show Mister Ed went off the air, and 53 years after Bamboo Harvester (Ed) died, something Read More...

The last of the three-dot journalists.

April 21, 2023April 21, 2023

On a whim last night, I did a Google search for a guy named Strange de Jim. Some older folks in the San Francisco Bay Area will know Read More...

“Unmarked graves out past Terlingua.”

April 6, 2023June 23, 2023

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

February 26, 2023March 24, 2023

“Propaganda is nothing other than the predecessor of an organization. Once there is an organization, it becomes the predecessor Read More...

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

January 20, 2023April 22, 2023

If you’re looking for a writing-related post on this page, keep lookin’. This isn’t it. When Tesla released its Model Read More...

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

December 30, 2022December 30, 2022

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

Another victim from Hawaii.

October 14, 2022October 14, 2022

This is a text exchange with an elderly man in Hawaii. He’s led a life of crime, apparently as a jewel thief, and wants to Read More...

Wanted: Someone who works for free.

October 12, 2022October 12, 2022

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, 2022August 7, 2022

I was reading an article on Yahoo News about the making of Clint Eastwood’s western Unforgiven, a big Oscar winner from 1992. The Read More...

Thoughts while reading a digital pile of screenplays.

August 3, 2022March 24, 2023

One of the delights of running this business is the opportunity to read the work of those who want to join up with me and the Read More...

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

Gloria Steinem

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

G.K. Chesterton

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

C. J. Cherryh

Writing has laws of perspective, of light and shade, just as painting does, or music. If you are born knowing them, fine. If not, learn them. Then rearrange the rules to suit yourself.

Truman Capote

Biography should be written by an acute enemy.

Arthur Balfour

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

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

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

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

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

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.

John Campbell

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

Matthew Arnold

A writer is a world trapped in a person.

Victor Hugo

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

William Shawn

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

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

Steven Bochco

Do you know what a playwright is? A playwright is someone who lets his guts hang out on the stage.

Edward Albee

The road to ignorance is paved with good editors.

George Bernard Shaw

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